Beverley Jane Stone

Beverley Jane Stone was born on May 13, 1937, in Ottumwa, Iowa to Wallace and Charlotte Ogg. The eldest of three siblings, she found a passion early in life for performing. After playing the starring role of Emily in a high school production of Our Town, she decided that her life goal was to be an actress. Beverley majored in drama at the University of Michigan She then pursued her dreams of an acting career by moving to New York City. She started with modeling roles and small parts. She slowly built up a resume while paying the bills with secretarial work in television. As a secretary for Captain Kangaroo, she met her future husband and father of her daughters, Jon Stone, who was then a writer for the show. She was eventually noticed enough to be offered a screen test by Universal Studios. Beverley flew to California, tested well and was offered a contract. While under contract, she starred as the original Marilyn on the television series The Munsters, performed with Lee J. Cobb in The Virginian, starred with Audey Murphy in the movie Bullet for a Badman, among other roles. Torn between her career and her love for Jon, she eventually broke her contract with Universal and returned to NYC to get married. In the following years, as Jon went on to become one of the creators and founding producers of Sesame Street, Beverley gave birth first to Polly and then Kate, dividing her time between their apartment on Riverside Drive and their home in the mountains of Vermont. Beverley continued to take roles in television commercials and soap operas while pursuing the equally demanding career of raising her daughters. Later in life, as the girls grew more independent, she returned to school to pursue a master's degree in History from NYU. She worked as a volunteer advocate for children in foster care as they navigated the legal system. She put her history degree to use as a researcher for historical documentary films, and helped to establish the living history program at the South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan. Later she rekindled her early love for the theater by joining the Hubbard Hall Theater Company in Cambridge NY. Led by the talented director Kevin McGuire, she found tremendous joy in playing roles such as Guinevere in Hamlet, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Irina Arkadina in The Seagull. She found a way to combine her love for acting with her love of children by mentoring many of the young people in the company. Her last and possibly favorite role was that of fierce and adoring grandmother to her three grandchildren, Ressa, Abby and Aidan. Whether taking them to the park, rocking them to sleep or exposing them to the cultural experiences that she loved so much in her beloved city of NY, she took on the role of grandmother with the same singular passion that she had exhibited for the whole of her life. For her grandchildren she was larger than life - a wonderful storyteller with endless adventures and funny anecdotes with which to entertain them. In January of 2017, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer. She fought it for two years with the same strength and determination that she approached all of the challenges of her life, but in February 21, 2019, she died in her sleep at the home in Vermont where she had raised her family. She is survived by her daughters Polly and Kate, grandchildren Abby and Aidan her son in law Bob Lucas and her siblings Clay Ogg and Nancy Hazen. She is also survived by the many lives she touched through her acting career, her huge heart, and the wonderful stories for her family of a life well lived. No services at this time