A. Beecher Greenman, Navy veteran, dies at 84

A. Beecher Greenman, an engineer who worked on many of Long Island's major highway projects and helped build Greenman Pedersen Inc. of Babylon into a major firm, has died of natural causes at his retirement home in Spruce Creek, Fla. He was 84.

Greenman, who died Jan. 19, was a man of huge accomplishments, but he downplayed those and his family roots, which he traced to the abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher and the author Harriet Beecher Stowe, according to his family.

"He was down to earth, easygoing, a big bear of a man who was gentle," his daughter, Suzy Heilpern of West Islip, recalled.

His son, Steven, of Stuart, Fla., said he father "touched the lives of many people with his energy, honesty, sense of humor and friendship. He will be dearly missed by all of us."

Born Arthur Beecher Greenman on Feb. 21, 1926, in Syracuse, he used the name Beecher or Beech because his father's name was also Arthur. His father died in 1944, when Greenman was 17, and he joined the U.S. Navy, his daughter said.

He met his future wife, Elinore Hastings, in Washington, D.C. They married on March 7, 1953, and settled in West Islip. After leaving the Navy, Greenman attended Clarkson University in Potsdam, got his engineering degree and went to work for the state Department of Transportation.

He later served 13 years on Clarkson's board of trustees, had been president of its alumni association, and in 1986, completed a program at Harvard University's School of Business Administration for small-business owners.

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He had been in the ROTC program at Clarkson and later served with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, building roads, bridges and other facilities for the military, his family said.

He worked for two engineering firms before he and Herbert Pedersen established Greenman Pedersen Inc. of Babylon in 1966. The firm now has more than 1,000 employees and is ranked as the 77th largest engineering firm in the United States, according to the Engineering News-Record, an industry publication.

Greenman was active on the Great South Bay Advisory Board and other coastal groups. While the family lived in West Islip, they also maintained a home on Captree Island.

Besides his wife, daughter and son Steven, he is also survived by two other sons, Joseph of Babylon and Peter of Kalispell, Mont., and 10 grandchildren. He was cremated after a service in Port Orange. Suzy and Phil Heilpern plan a celebration of his life at their West Islip home in July.