You couldn’t have asked for a better brother. Richard was six years younger than me and he favored our father: tall, blonde curly hair and beautiful “Paul Newman” blue eyes; while I was short, with brown curly hair and brown eyes.

Mother came home from the hospital with him and was immediately sick with a terrible cold.  It’s a wonder I hadn’t made HIM sick as I was feeding him and RINSING out his bottles in cold water.  This showed what a survivor he was; in spite of my feeble efforts of caring for him.

In the late forties – after the war, we finally were able to get bubble gum!  The gum was wrapped in twisted papers, which included tattoos.  I came home from school and Richard had evidently saved all of these tattoos and had transferred them all over his lower arms.  At this sight, I gasped and in mock horror, said that these were poisonous and would make him VERY sick.  His eyes got big as saucers, so I immediately came up with a remedy; I mixed some baking soda in a glass of water and told him to drink, so he wouldn’t get sick.  About that time, mom came home and saw what was going on and made ME drink the “remedy”.


Richard did love to tease! An ongoing joke was that that my nose was bigger than his. That may have proved true in my hideous gangly 7th grade school picture, but eventually I grew into my nose. 

I have to say, “Richard, the final word in the end is that you definitely had the biggest nose. However, if ever there was a competition for the biggest heart, you definitely would win that prize as well. Whether you have been in our lives as a big brother, a husband or a father, a grandpap or as a dear friend, knowing you has made all our hearts grow just a little bit larger than life.” 


Richard was incredibly smart. He could work wire puzzles lickity-split and could figure out practically anything mechanical. He was equally “heart-smart” in in his ability to recognize goodness and truth in others. At age fifteen, he met Mary and told Mom that he had met the girl he wanted to marry. That “heart-smart” knowing proved to be one of his life-long wisest and smartest of judgments. 

Rick spared no expense to look good for Mary. He used to pay me 50¢ to iron a shirt for him to wear when he was going out on a date with Mary. He did look quite handsome in a James Dean kinda way, wearing his crisply starched white shirt, often with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve, baring his biceps. For me, fifty cents bought a whole lot of penny candy or even afforded round trip fare downtown on the Benskin bus.

When I first started driving, Richard made a point to teach me how to properly change a tire, down to the finest details. He showed me how to break loose any overly tight lug nuts by bouncing my weight on the cross bar before the tire was jacked up off the ground. He cautioned me to turn over the hubcap and to place the lug nuts inside the bowl of the hubcap so none got lost, After Dad died, Richard gave me Dad’s little ’64 Fairlane. He had driven it himself for a while and knew it was mechanically safe. He brought the car to Lawrence where I was attending KU. The car had a manual stick shift, which I had never driven before. Rick taught me how drive a stick with a couple of hiccouphing test drives around the block before I had to rush off to work.

The house we grew up in was not much improved since the 20’s when Grandpa DeVault purchased it as a summer home where his children had plenty of room to run and play freely. We still used the outhouse at the back of the property next to an old tractor shed. Richard delighted in teasing me as a young kid, He had me convinced there was a mean goose that lived in the tractor shed and that it loved to chase and bite little kids. The path was pretty dark late at night and I walked quickly, quietly and ever alert so as to not awaken the sleeping scary goose. The house had plenty of delicious cold well water from the well our father “witched” and hand dug, but there was no hot water for washing dishes or bathing.  I recall taking a bath in a round galvanized tub in the kitchen with water heated on the stove.

As a young teenager, Richard got his first job working at Ida Brigg’s small grocery store across from Welborn School.  He saved money from his job and bought us a hot water heater for the house.

In that same store around Christmas, there were two very tall, soft vinyl dolls set high on top of the cold vegetable case, tipped slightly backwards in their open front boxes. They were not only placed physically high out of reach, but the price was also untouchable.  Each doll came with two dresses: a pink one and a turquoise blue one, covered in silver threaded lace flounces. She had removable pierced teardrop pearl earrings and silver/gray plastic high heels studded with rhinestones across the toes. I thought the doll was the most beautiful thing I ever had seen.  That Christmas the doll showed up under the tree, a gift from my big brother. He noticed things like that.

Richard was the best “big brother” a “little sister” could have.  Richard was nine years older. He always had my back.  With a brother like Richard, a little sister could become more fearless, knowing she had a gallant knight brother in the wings, or even a pit bull sleeping with one watchful eye open. He never hesitated a single heartbeat to jump in his truck and come jumpstart my car in the bitter winter or to fix what was broken, either with tools or a litany of jokes to laugh you out of a slump. 

OBITUARY

Richard H. Beers

August 19, 1944 – February 20, 2020

Chapel Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Gardens

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