Herman Hulten Beusse's Obituary
HERMAN HULTEN BEUSSEJust before the beginning of World War I, in 1914, Herman Hulten Beusse was born on January 17 in Atlanta, Georgia. In the many stories he told to his children, he remembered watching and saluting from his front porch the return of soldiers from victory over Germany. Many years later, he saluted the flag himself as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, with his three-year-old daughter, in Portsmouth, Virginia, during World War II. Among Mr. Beusse’s remembered stories were driving a Model T Ford, caddying for the Clifton Road Golf Course for a tip of seventy-cents a round, enduring the Great Depression of 1932, living in a farmhouse heated by a fireplace, plowing with Old Beck, the mule, paying rent by making shingles for a new barn roof, chopping cotton, butchering hogs, selling melons from the back of the truck, and his family’s taking in his older sister and her eight children, totaling eleven children in the farmhouse. After attending Draughton School of Commerce, Mr. Beusse worked for Howe Scale Company, Retail Credit Company, and Community Loan and Thrift, all in Atlanta, and, finally, Sears, Roebuck and Company in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1939, he married Marjorie Elizabeth Fields, enjoyed a one night honeymoon, and completed officer candidate training in Aberdeen, Maryland, while his wife remained in Atlanta. Instead of being assigned abroad, Herman felt lucky to be sent to Lordstown Ordnance Depot in Warren, Ohio, as Personnel Officer over fifteen hundred civilians, where his first child, Rebecca Frances, was born in 1943 and his second, Lee Hulten, in 1947. In 1949, Mr. Beusse transferred to civilian life in the same job and welcomed his wife’s mother, a stroke victim, to their home. Eventually, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to accept a job with Sears, Roebuck and Company and bought a house with financial help from the GI Bill. After serving as Personnel Manager of Sears in Nashville, Tennessee, he returned to Memphis, where he continued in that position at one of the country’s largest stores on North Watkins Street, until he was promoted to Operating Superintendent and served for twenty-seven years. He was highly respected by employees, who enjoyed his motivational speeches and warm sense of humor. Mr. and Mrs. Beusse traveled to Canada, New York City, and Europe, spent summers in Florida, and visited regularly both Hawaii and Colorado, where their daughter and family live. Their son, Lee, died at age twenty-four, after serving in Air Force Intelligence in Vietnam. Herman was active in Bellevue Baptist Church and helped found Second Baptist Church in 1964, serving as the presiding officer of the first organizational meeting, on the first board of trustees, and on the personnel committee as the church grew larger. Identifying appropriate property at 4680 Walnut Grove Road, he served on the first building committee, celebrating the completion of a one million dollar sanctuary on August 8, 1964. His wife, Marjorie Fields Beusse, served as the first secretary to the pastor, from 1962 to 1981, while often taking dictation and typing for the former pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, Robert G. Lee. For these and many other reasons, he will be remembered and admired. Many complex and handsome pieces of hand carved furniture reveal his talent and passion for construction of all sorts, as well as intricate wood carving. For his daughter’s painting studio in Denver, Colorado, he constructed shelving and cabinetry at home in Memphis, transported the custom built wood to Denver, and installed the panelling, all at age seventy-five. His affection for his children is represented in a permanent way through the hand carved desk he made for his granddaughter and cradle for his grandson’s birth. Their family cabin in Rocky Mountain National Park is filled with examples of his precise skill and foresight: shutters for winter windows, picture frames, candlesticks and wood benches. While he built, carved and constructed, his wife crocheted, embroidered and sewed curtains. Together, they painted cabinets and stocked them with antique dishes. His family enumerates the inventions he never had patented, as well. Of the many profound occasions when Herman helped other people (his life’s goal was to help “at least” one other person every day), his former neighbors will remember him the most gratefully for planting a row of thirty pine trees between the railroad and street along Southern Avenue to block the noise from trains from the coves, especially Thorn Ridge Cove. The trees are now thirty feet tall, symbolizing a fine, upright man of high ethical standards, who will not be forgotten. His ethics also applied to the golf course, where, as his grandchildren will attest, he espoused gentlemanly behavior and strict honesty. Herman Beusse leaves his daughter, Rebecca Beusse Holman, her husband, Robert, their children, Judith Holman Webster and son, Joshua Conner Holman and their spouses, Kerri Weaver Holman and Jay Leroy Webster. His great-grandchildren are Calvin Sinclair Webster, Hudson Beck Webster, Piper June Holman, and Elizabeth Griiffin Holman. Mr. Beusse’s family is extremely grateful for the care their beloved father and grandfather received from The Caring Place, Crossroads Hospice, and from the many neighbors and friends from Kirby Pines, Thorn Ridge Cove, and Second Baptist Church. Memorial contributions are welcome to Crossroads Hospice, 1669 Shelby Oaks Drive, Memphis, 38134; Kirby Pines Employee Fund, 3535 Kirby Road, Memphis, 38115; and Second Baptist Church and its affiliate, the Church Health Center, at 4680 Walnut Grove Road, Memphis, 38119. A memorial service will be held Saturday, January 3, 2015, at Kirby Pines Residential Community, 3535 Kirby Road, Memphis. But most important, more than physical memorials, would be our performing one good deed for someone else, each day of our lives. Then Herman Hulten Beusse will be remembered. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery, 5668 Poplar Ave. Memphis, TN 38119, “Behind the Stone Wall.”
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