Winter Haven Doctor Beach Brooks Dies At 81

By STACY JONES
THE LEDGER


Published: Friday, July 11, 2008 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, July 11, 2008 at 8:54 a.m.


WINTER HAVEN | Dr. Beach Alexander Brooks, 81, continued a family legacy in medicine reaching back as far as his great grandfather, Dr. John Beach. He died Wednesday after a long battle with Lou Gehrig's disease.

Brooks was one of the first board certified internists in Winter Haven and one of three doctors who formed the Internal Medicine Associates.

Dr. Alan Gasner said he worked with Brooks for 20 years at Winter Haven Hospital. He joined the IMA in 1975.

"He was a dedicated physician, always looking out for his patients. He had a keen sense of family and a loyalty to the hospital and his fellow physicians," Gasner said.

"He was particularly good with older people, and willing to spend a lot of time with them," he added. "He always had a corny joke for them."

Brooks' wife, Nancy, and four children - Nancy Lopez, Elizabeth Attaway, Steve and Beach Brooks Jr. - remember him as a warm spirit who had a penchant for practical jokes, peanut butter, popsicles, popcorn and photography.

Brooks was born Jan. 14, 1927, in Chattanooga, Tenn., to Dr. and Mrs. J. Culpepper Brooks Sr. He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville after graduating from McCallie School in his hometown.

He married Nancy Keener in St. Petersburg in 1952. They met, she said, after her brother set them up on a blind date after meeting Brooks at McCallie.

Brooks attended Temple Medical School in Philadelphia and interned at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga before completing a three-yearinternal residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

During his residency, his daughter Nancy Lopez said, he would call home to his wife while working 36-hour shifts. Their son Beach, an infant then, got so used to hearing his mother say "hello" on the phone to his father that he began calling him "Lollie," a mispronunciation of "hello."

The nickname stuck, Attaway said.

"I can't tell you how many kids called him Lollie," she said, adding that her father had nicknames for all of his children and grandchildren.

His wife, Nancy, also recalled his light-hearted nature.

"He was a lot of fun," she said. "He liked to take pictures. We were trying to play a little golf when he retired."

She and Brooks moved to Winter Haven to raise their four children in 1958.

Of his 50 years in Winter Haven, Brooks dedicated more than 40 of them to the Winter Haven Rotary Club, serving on the board of directors and as a former president. As co-dictionary chairman, Brooks helped distribute dictionaries annually to each fifth-grader in the Winter Haven area.

Bill Siegel, a Winter Haven photographer and Rotary Club member who had known Brooks for 27 years, said he was a kind and loyal club member.

"It's rare that a doctor joins a civic club outside of their practice," Siegel said. "He said all those years he was in practice as a doctor, Rotary was the only way he had to find out what was going on in the community."

He is survived by his wife, Nancy; sons, Beach Jr. and Steve; daughters, Elizabeth Attaway and Nancy Lopez; and grandchildren, Blair, Beach III, Drew Brooks, John III, Brooke, Ashley, Gerry, Max, Sam and Sarah.

Services will be held at 11:30 a.m., Saturday at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1410 Dundee Road, Winter Haven. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Covenant Presbyterian Church or The ALS Association, 27001 Aguour Road, Suite 250 Calabasas Hills, CA 91301-5104.