Robert A. Beaupré

Robert A. Beaupré, 82, died on March 2 at his home in Northfield, VT in the company of his loving wife, Maryann. The cause of death was a heart attack. Bob was born on November 1, 1937 in Southbridge, Massachusetts. The first of two sons of Armand and Alma (Boudreau) Beaupré, he attended local schools and played in the hedgerows and streams of Southbridge where he acquired his love for the outdoors. In 1955, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and after his service worked at the Southbridge News. In 1960, he married Louise Ann Kennedy and started a family, living in Sturbridge and Holland, MA. During his childhood Bob discovered Vermont while on family trips to Québec and would return often as a young man, hitchhiking to hunt in the Green Mountains. In 1966, he seized an opportunity to move his family to Vermont when he took a job as advertising sales manager at the Bennington Banner. Vermont would become his home for the rest of his life. Bob was a lifelong sportsman and a great enthusiast for the written word. Those interests converged in his work as a writer for and eventual owner of the Vermont Sportsman newspaper. He also operated B&D Painting Co. in southwestern Vermont and had stints as a substitute postman and school custodian. In 1982, he married Maryann Larson Whitesell, and in 1990 they moved to the Northeast Kingdom to open the Vermont Sportsman Lodge on Seymour Lake, where they provided rooms, meals, and guiding services for fishermen and hunters of deer, moose, bear, and upland game birds. A voracious consumer of both high and low brow fiction, newspapers, and the New Yorker on its day of arrival each week, Bob was a devoted regular at the Bennington, Derby, and Northfield public libraries. Setting camera traps, identifying birds at the feeder, and staging a good practical joke were how he passed the long winter days. In summer, he loved growing vegetables but hated eating them (except his beloved tomatoes). Bob had no patience for self-important people, but would befriend and indulge eccentrics, outsiders, and the less fortunate among us. Many were envious of his precise hand lettering, his graceful roll cast (Fenwick 5 weight), and his crack wingshot (Beretta 20 gauge side by side). He read all of his junk mail. He was preoccupied with garden-encroaching woodchucks and the weather, no matter the season, and nursed a particular obsession for the potholes and frost heaves on Union Brook Road during spring thaw. Happiness was found in many places: Hayden Pond, Somerset Reservoir, Barber’s Pond, Red Mountain, the Tunic, Mother Myrick Mountain, Clou Brook, and Norton Pond. In recent years it was found by doing a crossword puzzle with Maryann near a wood fire, watching Jeopardy, perusing a new seed catalog, opening a jar of heavily salted peanuts, and sipping a cold Genesee. Bob is greatly missed by his large family. He is survived by his wife Maryann, his brother George (Wanda) of Southbridge, MA, his son David (Elizabeth) of Bryn Mawr, PA, daughter Catherine Dickie (Daniel) of Shaftsbury, VT, daughter Renée White (Chrispin) of Poultney, VT, son Daniel (Amy) of Takoma Park, MD, and son Andrew (Deirdre) of Little Rock, AR, as well as stepson Jeffery (Carey) Whitesell of North Bennington, VT, stepson David Whitesell of Hyde Park, VT, stepdaughter Sonya Rhodes (Aaron) of Northfield, VT, sixteen grandchildren, three great grandchildren, nieces, and nephews, and his pug Eleanor. There will be a memorial service on June 6 at 11am at the Lake Paran Pavilion in North Bennington, VT, followed by a private interment of ashes. Those planning to attend are encouraged to check with a family member the week before, as the date may need to change if social restrictions are in place. Donations in his memory may be made to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center.