Harold A. Beal (1910-1999)
Harold A. Beal, 89, of High Valley, Idaho, passed away Wednesday, July 21, 1999, of natural causes at his ranch in High Valley.
Memorial services will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, July 29, at the Ola Community Center. A dinner will follow the memorial service.
Arrangements are under the direction of Potter Funeral Chapel, Emmett.
Harold Beal's family home-steaded in Ola in the early 1880s. Harold's mother, Naomi Gooden, graduated from Missouri State Normal School, and came to Ola in 1905 to teach at Ola School. She married Harold's father, Joe Beal, in 1906, and they homesteaded in High Valley. Harold's mother ran the High Valley Post Office until she died in childbirth in 1912, when Harold was one year old and his brother Paul was three. The boys' grandmother, Sophia Amelia McDonald Beal, helped raise the boys.
During the post-war economic slump that followed World War I, the boys and their father moved to Sweet Home, Ore., where their father worked at a sawmill and a berry-canning factory. The family then moved to Arvin, Calif., where Joe Beal worked as a farmhand and the boys picked grapes.
In 1929, Harold Beal graduated from Kern County High School. The family returned to High Valley the same year.
In 1930 Harold Beal worked as a ranger for the U.S. Forest Service at the Third Fork ranger station. During the summer of 1934, he managed a CCC crew at Third Fork. The next summer, Harold was foreman of a PWA crew made up of 30 local men. In the early '40s, Harold was assistant ranger on the Middle Fork.
Harold married Lola Poff in the late 1930s. They had four children, Arthur, Robert, Kathleen, and Joseph.
After World War II, Harold and his brother Paul started Beal Brothers Lumber Co. Paul bought a bull sawmill, and the brothers bought their father's homestead and additional timberland. Harold and Paul sawmilled, ranched, and farmed in High Valley and Brownlee until the late 1980s, when they retired.
In 1969, Harold Beal married Mary Lee McKinney Becktold of Nampa. Harold raised his wife's four children, Stan, Lisa, Michael, and Amy Becktold, on his ranch.
Harold is survived by his wife, Mary Lee Beal of High Valley; sons, Art Beal of Sweet, Robert Beal of Bend, Ore., Joe Beal of Auburn, Wash., Stan Becktold of Richland, Ore., and Michael Beck-told of High Valley; daughters, Kathleen Beal Esparza of Crescent City, Calif., Lisa Becktold Zuech of Annapolis, Md., and Amy Becktold McBryde of Clear Creek; and 22 grandchildren.
Donations may be sent to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
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