ANN BECK

BECK--Ann Chrystie Manny. 1931-2024. With sadness we announce the passing of a woman who encompassed many roles and lives, but most especially friend, wife, and mother. While raised in Rye, NY and Woodstock, VT, and attending Miss Hall's School and Briarcliff College, she became enamored of the wider range of America. An avid reader of American history, for Ann holidays and vacations were opportunities to explore the landscapes and peoples of that history, often in car trips out over the prairie or into the mountains or into the South, where things that had happened still echoed in the people there in the small towns and cities. Riding with cowboys while still a child sparked a special affinity with the American West and the tough people building lives there. She is preceded by her husband Ted and son Tad, and survived by sons Ralph, Avent, and Nathaniel, and by her grandchildren Nathan, Catherine, Daniel, Michael, and Madeline, and by her great-grandson Callum. Although a debutante (coming out at the Westchester Pavilion in 1949), as a young woman she consistently chose paths closer to nature, loving the forests and mountains of New Englandskiing, riding, hiking and meeting her future husband, from neighboring Scarsdale, NY, in Montana while he was working on a ranch. Married, life as a parson's wife in rural Virginia exposed her deeply to the South and its history. A little later, with Ted now a professor at the University of Nebraska, she especially enjoyed life in Lincoln and in the small, often still immigrant-based communities thereabouts. At times testing the patience of her young boys, those perfect vacations entailing long car trips across the country to see battlefields, small museums, and those special places in which people carved out lives and in small and large ways contributed to American history, from the Mohawk Valley to the Rosebud Reservation. Her sons recall with special fondness the many family trips west into the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the southwest during which their parents' love of the West became their own, too. She regretted it when illness took her back to suburban New York. There a fortuitous turn based on her work, with her niece Christina Wasch, on the costumes for a theatrical adaptation of Lee Smith's novel "Oral History" led the family back to Virginia, now to a farm in the Shenandoah Valley. There, with Ted, she gardened, walked the country lanes, loved her cat Tasha, and read ever more deeply into American history. Growing up one of three sisters, her role as a mother of only boys was new territory. From toilet seat lessons, and too many visits to the emergency room, she encouraged her sons to explore the envelope, believing they would learn by doing. She shared the value of a good hamburger and ice cream while surviving a merciful short love of Adel Davis diet suggestions and was able to indulge in her pistachio ice cream to the end. Her hardest time as mother was caring for her oldest son with his terminal cancer fight. Coming out on the other side, she welcomed a new son, Nathan, and then pushed herself further into being active beyond the home. She was a woman who admired historical figures who were tough and true to a mission, from Old Jules (Marie Sandoz's father) to Bishop Lamy of Santa Fe. Joining in with some of her husband Ted's work with Sinte Gleska University, she created the concept of a special art program that is now the Great Plains Art Institute, an award-winning art program embracing mainstream traditional art and native American art. Memorial services will be held in March, in Charlotteville. In lieu of flowers, gifts may be directed to Sinte Gleska University and its Great Plains Art Institute, or Hospice of the Piedmont.