The Memorial Wall

Longtime Wellfleet resident Robert DuBeau succumbed to Parkinson’s disease on Jan. 21, 2023 after trying to ignore the affliction for years.

Bob was born in Willimantic, Conn. in 1934, the third of four children of Conrad and Esther (Parent) DuBeau. He attended Windham Regional High School, where as a freshman he met his future wife, Marsha Turshen. He was admitted to Harvard, where he worked to pay his tuition by establishing a food concession at the residence houses. By the time he graduated in 1956, his multi-employee business was taken over by the college as part of its food service.

Bob first fell in love with the Outer Cape when, shortly after graduation, he was drafted and stationed at Camp Wellfleet — then an Army outpost near Marconi Beach in what is now the National Seashore. After his discharge, Bob attended the University of Connecticut Law School and entered practice in nearby Rockville. Bob, Marsha, and their growing family soon started vacationing in Wellfleet.

After several years of renting, they purchased a cottage on Lieutenant Island before it had electricity or telephone service. As their children reached driving age, the tide-ruled access to the island became untenable. Wishing to stay in the area, they were among the first to purchase a parcel of the former Camp Mar-Ven and Camp Chequessett, converting the old counselor and guest house into a summer cottage. When they retired, they renovated the house for year-round use and moved to Wellfleet.

Bob quickly became a member of the Wellfleet Housing Authority, helping to provide affordable housing for year-round local workers. He helped found Nauset Neighbors, the volunteer network to help aging residents stay in their homes. He was the first representative from Our Lady of Lourdes parish to the area interfaith council. He was an enthusiastic golfer at the Chequessett Yacht & Country Club and a volunteer at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater.

Bob was full of wit and fun, once leading a passel of family kids down Commercial Street in Provincetown after a Marx Brothers movie at the Waters Edge Cinema, all striding like Groucho. Many friends from Rockville were invited to visit the DuBeaus on their Wellfleet vacations, and several, including Pat and Dick Dimock, established their own connections to the Outer Cape in part based on Bob’s enthusiasm.

“You don’t have a boat,” said one curious friend. “You don’t seem to like sitting on the beach. What is it about Wellfleet?” to which Bob answered, “I just love to look at it.”

Bob is survived by his wife, Marsha; his five children: Dr. Catherine DuBeau of Lebanon, N.H., Matthew and wife Leslie Haynes-DuBeau of Nyack, N.Y., Peter and Lisa DuBeau of Norfolk, Va., Adam and Lauren Love-DuBeau of Marcellus, N.Y., and Sarah DuBeau-Farley and Stephen Farley of Dorchester; his grandchildren, Madeline, Henry, Julia, Jack, August, Sam, and Elise; and the families of multiple nieces and nephews.

In a career that lasted more than 60 years and included decades on stage in Sarasota at Asolo Repertory Theatre and memorable film roles in “Moonstruck” and two Woody Allen films, David S. Howard built a connection with audiences and fellow actors who adored him.

“David and I worked together for over 30 years and did a lot of plays together and had a lot of laughs together,” said Howard Millman, the former producing artistic director of Asolo Rep. “He was one of the most brilliant actors I’ve ever known. He was so insightful in every role he played. He was an effortless actor and he was always ready.”

Howard, who had retired from acting due to the impact of Parkinson’s Disease, died on Tuesday at age 94.

From 1976 to 1982, he appeared in more than 40 plays at Asolo Rep and he returned in the mid-1990s when Millman, who had previously served as managing director, returned as artistic director. In more recent years, he appeared in Frank Galati’s production of “12 Angry Men,” “Visiting Mr. Green,” Martin Vanderhof in “You Can’t Take it With You,” Grampa Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath,” and Yogi Berra in the one-man play “Nobody Don’t Like Yogi.” He played Scrooge in the theater’s one-time annual production of “A Christmas Carol” and a judge in Joanna Glass’s “Trying.”

Michael Donald Edwards, the current producing artistic director, chose “Yogi” to give him a chance to work with Howard.

“What I experienced with him was the most generous, wonderful, inspiring partner. I was a newbie compared to him and so grateful for that whole experience with him to work on a play about an American iconic figure like Yogi Bera with an American theater icon like David Howard,” said Edwards, who later directed Howard in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Lesley Elliott’s husband of 50 years has paid tribute to the domestic violence campaigner, who has died following an “incredibly difficult” battle with Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

The 76-year-old, who was the mother of Sophie Elliot, died at Ross Home in Dunedin on Sunday.

Following the brutal murder of Sophie by her former boyfriend Clayton Weatherston in 2008, Lesley set up the Sophie Elliott Foundation and toured New Zealand teaching young people about safe and healthy relationships and the warning signs of abuse.

Gil ​Elliott paid tribute to his former wife of 50 years, who became a tireless campaigner after their daughter’s death.

That included talking to young women around the country about abusive relationships.

He will deliver a eulogy at Friday’s service and noted their two sons “had been robbed of the two women in our family”.

Her declining health over the past two years had been “incredibly difficult” for the family, he said.

Lesley Elliott co-authored a best-selling book about her daughter’s death, Sophie's Legacy, with Bill O’Brien. At least eight women credited it as being the catalyst for them leaving their violent partners.

O’Brien, a Dunedin-based author, said he approached Elliott about writing the book “to give her a voice” after the high-profile court trial.

“There were days when I would sit down at her home to do an interview, and she would take out a note that Sophie had written and just lose it ... So we would go for a walk on the beach and have another go the next day.”

The book, and the Loves-Me-Not programme designed to prevent abusive behaviour in relationships, resulted in the pair receiving hundreds of positive responses from people who had been in unhealthy relationships.

“I firmly believe if Sophie had a programme like Loves-Me-Not in her final years at school she would have known when things went wrong in her relationship,” Elliott told Stuff in 2014.

Her ill health led to the police taking over as lead agency for the programme and its resources. Loves-Me-Not continued to cater for year 12 students across New Zealand.

“An incredible lady, she used to say ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about – I’m just a nurse and a mother,’” O’Brien said.

She would go on to receive the NEXT magazine Woman of the Year Award, which celebrates outstanding achievements of Aotearoa women, in 2011. She then took out the supreme award at the 2014 Women of Influence Awards.

In the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours, she was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to the prevention of domestic violence.

To the average wine drinker, Ron Mansfield wasn’t a household name. But the viticulturist was a quiet force who shaped California wine in important ways over the last 35 years.

He helped put El Dorado County, and by extension the Sierra foothills, on the map as a wine destination. He was among the first in the state to plant now-beloved grape varieties like Gamay. The fruit that Mansfield grew ended up in bottles made by some of California’s most highly respected wine producers, like Arnot-Roberts, Edmunds St. John, Jolie-Laide and Keplinger.

Mansfield died last month at age 76, after a long ordeal with Parkinson’s disease. Since his death, those who knew him have been reflecting on his remarkable legacy. It’s a legacy that stretched all the way to the White House, which served the cherries that Mansfield grew — he was as much a stone-fruit farmer as a grape farmer — during every presidential administration from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama.

“It was such an important thing for me to have the chance to work with somebody like Ron,” said Steve Edmunds, the winemaker behind Edmunds St. John. “I felt very lucky to have somebody with Ron’s gift for farming interested in what I was doing.”

When Mansfield began farming in the 1980s, El Dorado County was in a transitional moment. The region’s pears, then the cornerstone of its agricultural industry, had been infected with blight. It was clear that farmers would need to shift to a new crop.

Mansfield had just come into some money thanks to a winning racehorse named Loyal Lad, and in 1980 he bought a plot of land. He grew cherries, peaches, nectarines and plums, calling the operation Goldbud Farms. The Goldbud cherries soon gained renown; they’re what caught the attention of White House chief usher Gary Walters. The Chronicle devoted an entire article to Mansfield’s cherries in 1991, quoting one of his retail customers: “The cherries are the biggest, darkest, best-tasting I have ever had.”

Soon Mansfield took over the farming at neighbor Al Fenaughty’s property, where he tended to a small section of Gewürztraminer and Syrah grapevines.

The Syrah grapes initially went to home winemakers, but in the late ’80s, Edmunds came calling. He was looking for Syrah and bought the entire Fenaughty Vineyard crop, which he estimates was about one barrel’s worth. “The wine was really intriguing and quite lovely,” said Edmunds. He shared some with Amador County winemaker Bill Easton, and the two agreed that it smelled like the legendary French Syrah Côte Rôtie.

From then on, Mansfield and Edmunds became inextricably linked. Many other vineyard owners throughout El Dorado began hiring Mansfield to farm their vineyards, and whenever he had the chance to plant something new, he’d consult Edmunds about which grape varieties might do well. He was willing to take chances on obscure, unproven cultivars like Vermentino and Grenache Blanc. Eventually, word got out among winemakers in Napa and Sonoma that Mansfield oversaw a treasure trove of these types of grapes, which tend to be scarce in Cabernet- and Chardonnay-dominant Wine Country.

“It was just slow, steady, organic growth,” said Mansfield’s son, Chuck Mansfield. Once Mansfield started working with a winemaker, “if they wanted some variety, and even if it was a bit of an outlier like Arneis or Negroamaro, we’d put in a little block for them.” 

Gamay may have been the ultimate coup. The signature red grape of France’s Beaujolais region has never been a major commercial success, always doomed to command lower prices and less respect than a somewhat similar-tasting grape, Pinot Noir. Yet wine geeks, especially those who prize subtler wines, adore Gamay.

“I felt like I had tricked Ron into planting it,” Edmunds said. In the 1990s, when Mansfield began cultivating Gamay in the granite-packed soils of the Barsotti Vineyard, Edmunds said, “what anybody in California knew about Gamay was virtually nothing.” Mansfield later planted it at additional sites too, including the Witters Vineyard, and winemakers now line up for the chance to buy it.

Along the way, Mansfield supported the burgeoning wine industry in his community. “So many people I didn’t realize he’d worked with have come to me and said, ‘Your dad helped me so much, getting my irrigation lines set up or choosing the grape varieties,’ ” said Chuck Mansfield, now Goldbud’s general manager.

“Mansfield is known in the community as someone who sticks his neck out but who knows what he is doing,” wrote Sibella Kraus in that 1991 Chronicle article.

He never lost his passion for horse racing, and he remained an active competitive bowler through his later years. In 2022, while fighting Parkinson’s symptoms, he competed in his 50th consecutive U.S. Bowling Congress Open Championship in Las Vegas. He earned a standing ovation, Chuck Mansfield said.

And through the end, Mansfield remained just as committed to his other crops, like the cherries, as to wine grapes. When asked which fruit his father favored, Chuck Mansfield returned a surprising answer.

“I think he really loved Fuji apples,” Chuck Mansfield said. “They’re not the most profitable. We don’t get the most attention or notoriety for those. But the satisfaction on his face when he was eating one of those Fuji apples — it was the same look on his face as when he and Steve were having a wine that really spoke to them.”

Ned Phillippe was born in 1946, and died peacefully in his home of Parkinson's disease on Fed 10, 2022. He was the oldest son of Don and Ruth Phillippe of Indiana and is survived by two brothers, John and Tom. Ned earned a MS degree in education from Indiana University. He worked as a teacher, and in transportation with Northwest Airlines and Amtrak.