SOUTH ROYALTON — For Anne Beck, life was at its best when spent helping others.
The collage and print artist from Royalton was a shoulder to cry on for many of the friends she met through SafeArt, a Chelsea organization that helps people heal emotionally through art.
And to others, she was the source of an infectious laugh, the leader of charity fundraising or someone who would just call up to share a funny story she saw online.
Friends and family say it’s Beck’s positive attitude and desire to make those around her happy that they’ll miss, after she died on Nov. 24, 2018, after a year battling breast cancer.
“She was just really, really big-hearted. And I wish she had known the effect she had on people,” said her wife, Mitch Beck. “I don’t think you could really meet Anne and forget her.”
Beck was born on Aug. 30, 1954, the fifth child of a large family living on Lake Wallenpaupack in northeast Pennsylvania.
“It was great. We were right on the water and had a wonderful opportunity to sail, and swim and do all of the other water things that you do,” said Robin Snowden, Beck’s older sister.
“Anne was not as enthusiastic about water skiing as I was,” Snowden said. But she did partake in family skiing trips to the nearby Pocono Mountains.
After graduating from high school, Beck enlisted in the Army at the behest of her parents, and spent three years living on bases in California and Kentucky.
“I don’t think she really liked it much,” Snowden said. “She was not a physical person.”
Beck then moved to the Seacoast in the 1980s, and took a job at Portsmouth (N.H.) Regional Hospital. She loved the beach, and spent free time visiting the shore and Snowden, who lived in the city.
“I used to see her every day when she lived here and worked in Portsmouth,” Snowden said. “She was very generous and kind. She would do just about anything for you.”
Beck showed those characteristics when she left New Hampshire to take care of her ailing mother, who still lived in Pennsylvania. While, there she also worked at Grey Towers National Historic Site, the family home of Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the United States Forest Service.
After her mother died in 1999, Beck wanted to continue working for the government and found a job as an administrative assistant at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover.
She found a place in Cornish and came to the Upper Valley, where she would meet her future wife, then known as Mitch Jespersen.
Mitch said she first encountered Beck after replying to a personal ad in Out in the Mountains, a Vermont newspaper for lesbians and gay men.
“Woman, 47, looking for the love of her life,” the 2002 ad said. “Are you funny? Are you smart? Are you kind? Can you stand in your life and still share in mine?”
Mitch replied, “I may be the love of your life. But right now, I just want to be friends.”
The exchange ultimately led to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Springfield, Vt. The two arrived around 6 p.m. and left three hours later, when employees began vacuuming around their feet, Mitch Beck said.
“She was very sweet and kind, and I could feel she had a wonderful heart,” Beck said.
“We were probably friends for 30 minutes. It was just right and it moved very quickly,” she added. “We both just knew we belonged together.”
In 2003, the couple obtained a civil union and purchased their Royalton home. They were married in Massachusetts a year later. At the time, the Bay State was the only state allowing same-sex couples to wed.
But when Vermont passed the Marriage Equality Act in 2009, the Becks held off on marrying again — at least until they met Peter Shumlin on the campaign trail.
The then-gubernatorial candidate approached the Becks during a meet-and-greet organized by a mutual friend at the Quechee Club.
“You wait. When I’m elected, you’ll come to my office and I’ll marry you,” Mitch Beck recalls being told. “And he absolutely did.”
Eight months after taking office, Shumlin made good on his promise and officiated a short ceremony in his office in Montpelier in front of about a dozen of the Becks’ family and friends. Because the governor’s office doesn’t come with marrying authority, he spent $100 of his own money to obtain a “temporary officiant” certificate.
“I had to pull big strings to make this happen,” Shumlin joked at the time. “This isn’t in my job description.”
“Her relationship with Mitch was the absolute most central part of her life,” said Leah Goat, a family friend who lives in Hanover. “They understood each other and accepted each other.”
Goat met the Becks while attending a women’s week in Saco, Maine. The event, which Beck lead for several years, gave mature women who never went to summer camp the opportunity to have that experience.
“She had such flair,” Goat said, adding that Beck was known for wearing big flowers on her hats and knitting large scarves.
Beck’s organizing and skills were also valued at SafeArt, which uses creative and expressive arts to support mental health and help people overcome trauma. Beck convinced her wife to begin attending the group in 2002.
“Slowly, she would come early to pick up Mitch or drop Mitch off and end up staying,” said Tracy Penfield, who founded SafeArt.
As a member, Beck helped raise money for the group, getting it listed as a recipient in the Hanover Co-op’s Pennies for Change program. Penfield also recalls a time when the Becks collected old windows, asked visual artists to create works of art on them and auctioned the pieces off, raising about $9,000 for the nonprofit.
“She was always thinking in those terms. She just had lots and lots of ideas, whether it was fundraising or being creative or solving problems,” Penfield said. “I used to joke that I would always envision her as the head of a large corporation, or president of the United States or governor. She just was a real problem-solver and very outspoken for sure.”
Beck was passionate about art, and specialized in collages using old stamps, “interesting paper” and quotes, Penfield said.
“She really embraced the idea of repurposing and recycling materials,” she said. “Some of her work was very literal, and some of her work was very abstract. I loved that about her, her ability and her creative mind being fluid that way.”
Penfield said one piece of art particularly sticks out. A few years ago, the Becks found an old violin someone had left at the dump, brought it home, and used it for a collage. The project snowballed into others using guitars and other old instruments.
“There was something about the metaphor of music, and the lyricism of music and how these instruments, even though they no longer can be played to make a beautiful sound, have a beautiful shape in themselves and then can be ornamented into many pieces of art,” Penfield said.
Beck was also an avid reader, kayaked and was known to include friends in her art projects, either taking them to Tip Top Pottery in White River Junction or including them in a group project at home.
To her friends, she was someone who they could lean on, and was known to drop everything to lend a hand.
Connie Scott, a friend from Royalton, said Beck not only cared for her puppy when she was hospitalized with a staph infection in 2014, but also frequently visited the hospital and brought along gifts.
When Scott was recovering, the Becks got her out of the house with trips to peach orchards in Massachusetts and the Shelburne Museum.
“She was just always thinking about other people and what might make them happy.” Scott said. “It was just so incredible to me just how caring and thoughtful of other people (Beck was), just putting other people first.”
And no matter what was going on in Beck’s life or what ailment she was battling, she always told friends things were “pretty good,” Scott said.
Even if some bad news came out in a phone conversation, Beck was known to reply “Well, that’s the way it is and it could be worse.
“She was just always one of the most upbeat people I’ve ever known,” Scott said.
That vigor continued even as Beck battled breast cancer. After undergoing a double mastectomy last summer, Beck and a group of friends went to the beach where they created two large breasts with sand, read poetry and talked, said Goat.
Beck called the event “ta-ta to tatas” and “It was sort of a way to mourn losing that part of life,” Goat said.
And at Beck’s life celebration, she invited everyone to bring along their favorite “stupid joke.”
“The minister said it was the most fun memorial service she’d ever done,” Goat said. “That (invitation) freed us up to tell the dumbest jokes you’d ever heard in your life.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.