By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Paul Frederick Beatley, 78, a retired Navy Department program manager involved primarily with nuclear submarines and a longtime community activist, died Nov. 5 at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington from complications of a stroke he suffered in September. A Capitol Hill resident, he lived in a house his wife's great-grandmother built in 1905.
Mr. Beatley stayed in the neighborhood, even during the difficult years of the 1960s and 1970s, and worked for better schools and safe streets. He was a leader in the effort to prevent the Southwest Freeway from cutting through Capitol Hill, which would have destroyed Eastern Market and the neighborhood's social and economic vitality.
As founder and president of the Capitol Hill Kiwanis Club in the early 1960s, he brought the first African American businessmen into the organization and founded the Capitol Hill Community Council because the Capitol Hill Civic Association was whites-only at the time. He also founded the Capitol Hill News and was a member of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society.
Mr. Beatley was born in St. Louis to British parents who never became U.S. citizens. He grew up in England and attended several colleges, including Oxford University's Queens College. Too young for active duty during World War II, he assisted in air raid rescue operations in London and later served as a cadet pilot in the Royal Air Force. He was still flying years later as a member of the Maryland Wing of the Civil Air Patrol.
At the end of the war, he joined the staff of the commercial attache's office at the U.S. Embassy in London and then became a member of the U.S. delegation to the first session of the Council of Foreign Ministers. He returned to the United States toward the end of 1945, working his way across the Atlantic as a crew member of a converted liberty ship, and took a job in Washington in the State Department's passport office. He returned to England not long afterward as a staff member for the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.
Returning to the United States in 1946, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the military attache's office in Moscow, where he was an intelligence analyst. After his discharge, he attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University but left without getting a degree. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland in 1975.
In the early 1950s, he joined the Navy Department, where he worked in various positions, including program manager for fleet maintenance and modernization and head of the Polaris/Poseidon weapons systems management and evaluation. He retired in 1980 as director of management systems for the Trident weapon system.
In addition to his Capitol Hill community activism, Mr. Beatley was active with the Boy Scouts, a founding member of Reading Is Fundamental and a board member of the National Children's Choir, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington and the St. Peter's Parochial Home School Association. He also served as a member of the Chief of Police's Citizens Advisory Council and the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Ward 6B. During the Salvation Army's annual Christmas fund drive, he was a regular bell ringer at Eastern Market.
A son, Kevin Beatley, died in 1982.
Survivors include his wife of 55 years, Mary Anne Beatley of Washington; seven children, Christopher Walter Beatley of College Park, Kirk Eugene Beatley and Noreen Elizabeth Beatley, both of the Washington, Paul Cullen Beatley of Kensington, Mary Kathleen Beatley of Pleasantville, N.Y., Craig James Beatley of Louisville, Colo., and Cameron David Beatley of Oak Park, Ill.; and 12 grandchildren.
