Alex Bealer

Background

Bealer was born in Valdosta in Lowndes County in southern Georgia, but reared in Atlanta, where he graduated in 1938 from Boys High School, which thereafter closed in 1947.

Education

Emory University.

Career

He authored The Art of Blacksmithing Old Ways of Working Wood,The Tools That Built America, and The Successful Craftsman. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English at Emory University in Atlanta. In 1943, during World World War II, he entered the United States Marine Corps and advanced through the ranks to captain.

He was stationed in the Pacific theater and was subsequently recalled for duty during the Korean War.

He made his living as an advertising executive. Woodworking and writing were hence his avocations.

Bealer"s grandfather, Alexander Winkler Bealer, Senior (1860 – June 28, 1921), was a Baptist minister who served in Atlanta, Cartersville, Thomasville, and Eastman, Georgia, as well as Valdosta and Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

At the time of his death, the grandfather Bealer was the pastor at the First Baptist Church of Blakely, Georgia.

They were listed as twenty-seven and twenty years of age, respectively, in the 1920 census. Bealer died of a heart attack eleven days after he had turned fifty-nine while working in his craft shop in the basement of his home in Sandy Springs. His widow is the former Helen Eitel, a native of Chicago, Illinois.

There are five living Bealer children, Alexander, IV (born 1949), of Moorpark, California, Janet B. Rodie and Susie B. Duncan, both of Atlanta, Alice Bealer of Townsend in south Georgia, and Edmund H. Bealer (born 1954) of Sandy Springs north of Atlanta in Fulton County.

There are nine Bealer grandchildren. He is interred at Arlington Memorial Park in Sandy Springs.

Connections

Acquaintance:

Bethel Baptist