( Family photo / FAMILY PHOTO ) - Shannon Beebe points to grass on the wheel of the plane after landing on a grass runway. He loved flying in remote places.
Shannon Beebe loved the thrill of piloting small planes, the kinds that could take off and land on water, fly through African conflict zones and impress women.
The thick-bodied Army lieutenant colonel — who played competitive polo and co-
authored an anti-weapons book that riled military colleagues — logged 1,000 hours of backcountry flying in Africa and Alaska. He boasted about flying across the Arctic Circle and the Equator. He enjoyed jumping out of airplanes, too.
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But the flight that ended Beebe’s life was in tranquil Fauquier County last Sunday, a clear afternoon. Beebe, 42, was piloting a single-engine plane toward Warrenton Air Park, carrying his girlfriend, Alexandria attorney Elizabeth Pignatello, when the aircraft banked steeply, crashed in a field and burst into flames, according to Virginia State Police, relatives and a witness.
Police have not officially identified the aircraft’s passenger, but Pignatello’s mother, Enid Robinson of Prince William County, confirmed that her daughter, who was 39, was in the plane. The crash remains under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.
No matter where he went, Beebe devoted his life to public service. He was cautious about risk but never let fear of death — or fear of rankling the bosses — stop him from living the way he wanted.
A Texas native who grew up in Arkansas, Beebe climbed the military’s hierarchy and ultimately wound up the darling of the humanitarian crowd.
He graduated in 1991 from the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point. During the late 1990s, Beebe served in combat and stability operations in the Balkans and was a commander during the Operation Fox bombing campaign in Iraq. From 2009 to 2010, he served as an assistant Army attache at the U.S. Embassy in Angola.
“Some people were suspicious about us, because the U.S. supported the other side in the Angolan civil war several years ago, but he was a bridge builder and reached out to Angolans, moving our relations forward with success,” said Dan Mozena, the former ambassador to Angola, who worked with Beebe. “Shannon was very much a people kind of person, and he had a very dynamic personality.”
By the mid-2000s, Beebe had forged a friendship with Mary Kaldor, a British academic tapped by the European Union to generate ideas to bolster security on the continent. Beebe and Kaldor decided to collaborate on a book. The thesis: Traditional armies are no longer sufficient to stabilize conflict zones, and U.S. military forces should collaborate more with non-governmental organizations to protect civilians and communities rather than focusing on destroying enemies.
When the book, “The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon,” was published in 2010 by Public Affairs, Beebe got flak from some parts of the military, Kaldor said.
“In Angola, he wanted to go out and find what the people were really wanting and develop a strategy around that, but that’s not what the Pentagon wanted,” Kaldor said. “He was very frustrated.”
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