Obituaries - Aug. 24, 1999

Patricia Beer; British Poet

Patricia Beer, 79, British poet lauded for her wry handling of eternal themes including death, theology and everyday existence. Born in Exmouth, England, she was profoundly marked by her family’s strict adherence to the Plymouth Brethren faith, although she later severed her link to the religion. In her 1968 prose memoir, “Mrs. Beer’s House,” she gave a compelling account of her life in the stern, inward-looking religious community. After Exmouth Grammar School, Exeter University and Oxford, Beer lectured in Italy at the University of Padua, the British Institute in Rome and the Ministero Aeronautica in Rome. After she returned to Britain in 1953, she began writing poetry for the first time since childhood, inspired by her heroes William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy. She published her first collection, “The Loss of the Magyar and Other Poems,” in 1959, and continued to produce a small volume of new poems every four or five years for the rest of her life. Her work ranged widely through personal, anecdotal and historical subject matter. In the 1960s, she taught at Goldsmiths College in London. In addition to her poetry and memoir, she wrote a historical novel, “Moon’s Ottery,” and a scholarly study of 19th century female novelists, “Reader, I Married Him.” On Aug. 15 in Honiton, England, of a stroke.

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* Rosie Jacuzzi; Family Invented Whirlpool

Rosie Jacuzzi, 95, oldest member of the Jacuzzi family, which invented the Jacuzzi whirlpool. Born in Cuneo, Italy, she came to America as a toddler and survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which killed her mother and brother. After a few years back in Italy with relatives, she moved to Berkeley at age 11 to live with her father and stepmother. She later married one of the Jacuzzi brothers, who invented the Jacuzzi pump to pull water from wells. The brothers later invented the whirlpool bath which bore their name and came to grace many back yards, to assist a nephew with rheumatoid arthritis who required water therapy. On Aug. 4 in Walnut Creek.