Mark Beach ~ Class of 1973
Arrived ~ 4/1/1955
Departed ~ 9/17/2020
Mark Beach, 65, of East Petersburg, passed away Thursday evening, September 17, 2020 at Hospice & Community Care in Mount Joy.
He was born in Darby, PA on April 1, a fitting date, probably, as he had a keenly developed sense of the sublime and the ridiculous.
The fourth of seven children, he was preceded in death by his parents, Bob and Edna Beach, and older brother, John Beach.
He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Naomi; children, Audrey and Wesley; brothers, Bob, David and Chip; sisters, Deborah and Grace, as well as several nieces and nephews.
Mark was a globe-circling photographer, writer and videographer and a nonprofit communications manager and strategic planner.
He was a loving family guy and a loyal friend with a bear hug, an irresistible laugh and a creative soul. He would always stop whatever he was doing to get the perfect shot.
There is an old picture of Mark from southern Africa; he’s leaning casually on a railing, sleeves rolled, mountains rising up behind. He might be just starting to grin. Some cool vista lay ahead. Some unsung, poignant narrative.
It was his formula.
Travel, art and social justice were Mark’s lifeblood. Raised in Warminster, he spent several formative years (1967-69) in Thailand, where his dad had been transferred. The Vietnam War was burning. Mark’s heroes were photographers, historians, reporters – the people who held the power brokers to account.
He snapped away at first with a Brownie fixed lens camera. Back home and graduated from Messiah College and Temple University with a degree in radio, TV and film, he launched a freelance photography business. He went on to show his work in fine art galleries in Lancaster.
Mennonite Central Committee brought Mark to Lancaster in the 1970s — and dispatched him to document its ministries around the world. He packed light, carried a small camera and got in close.
He employed this same intimate MO as a freelance Lancaster Newspapers “photog” in the 1980s, and as a staff writer for the former Sunday News in the early 1990s. At the Sunday News, he penned sensitive, compelling stories on just about everything under the Lancaster County sun.
In 1992 this dedicated news junkie reinvented himself. He studied international journalism at Baylor University and flew to South Africa to complete his master’s. Most happily, life reinvented him right back.
Letters home mentioned a “dear friend.” Mark and Naomi Vlok Beach, now a teacher, met in an exchange student program in 1993. The couple married in 1995.
Audrey was born five years later and Wesley in 2003, coincidentally the same time period when Mark’s hair started to gray.
The family settled in Lancaster, where Mark became MCC director of communications in 2000. Mark kept moving, sometimes filing reports from earthquake zones and remote African villages where he slept on the ground. A journalist buddy who favored five-star hotels joked: ‘Mark Beach never travels anywhere there’s indoor plumbing.’
But in 2006, the Beaches relocated to the geopolitical epicenter of Europe — Geneva, Switzerland. Mark, the new director of communications for the World Council of Churches, now moved in a rarefied milieu –Pope Benedict XVI, for example – and enjoyed an epic view of Mark’s beloved Alps from his apartment balcony in Genthod.
The Beaches explored Europe before returning to Lancaster County at the end of 2014. Mark served three and a half years as communications director for Mennonite Disaster Service.
Art remained his passion, inside and outside of the job.
A Mark Beach picture or a Mark Beach story was a thing of grace, said retired LNP photographer Dan Marschka. “He was an early adopter of using video at MCC.” He had rare talents for visualizing scenes, listening patiently and “seeing deeper inside you than you might see inside yourself.”
And he moved people to action, including Marschka, whom he recruited for numerous MCC trips in the early 2000s. “I became something I hadn’t been” before experiencing the “unpredictability” and beauty of the Developing World, Marschka said. “A citizen of the earth. It was a gift he gave me.”
An avowed pacifist, Mark was eternally boyish, insatiably curious and widely read. He cared deeply about his family, the world’s dispossessed and the menace of climate warming, which he documented a few years ago amidst slowly drowning islands in the Pacific.
Mark played a mean Gordon Lightfoot on his guitar. He began writing a novel.
Near the end of his life his mantra was “Eat, walk, love.”
One afternoon this past summer, he made the best cheesesteaks anyone has ever tasted.
Goofy humor was another of Mark’s strong suits.
“It’s good to laugh,” he often said, after relating some hilarious incident he’d experienced or witnessed.
It was. And when remembering this gentle, one-of-a-kind man and his stories from the road, it always will be.
Because of Covid-19 restrictions, a Celebration of Life will not be held at this time.
In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that memorial contributions be made in Mark’s honor to Hospice & Community Care, 4705 Old Harrisburg Pike, Mount Joy, PA 17552 or the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute, 2102 Harrisburg Pike, Lancaster, PA 17601.
To send a condolence, please visit Mark’s Memorial Page at www.CremationPA.com.
LNP Media Group, Inc.
Former World Council of Churches (WCC) communications director Mark E. Beach was honored at a commemorative prayer service on 22 September.
Beach, who died 17 September in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA, served the WCC from 2007 through its 10th Assembly in 2013 and to the end of 2014. He then returned to the USA to work with the Mennonites as director of communications for Mennonite Disaster Services (MDS).
The virtual prayer service gathered former colleagues and friends online for moments of prayer, recollection, and appreciation for the former WCC staffer.
Beach was an award-winning photographer, videographer and feature writer who spent his whole career in church-related media, news writing and international reporting. Prior to joining the WCC, in his work for the Mennonite Central Committee (2000–2007), he received an Associated Church Press award for his development of the MCC’s magazine, A Common Place, and his DVD portraying post-war Iraq earned a prestigious CINE Award. With colleague Julie Kauffman he co-authored a very popular children’s cookbook, Simply in Season.
“It was with sorrow that we received the news about the passing of Mark Beach,” said Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, interim general secretary of the WCC. “Through his tireless ministry for communication, justice and peace, Beach leaves behind an inspiring legacy of material for the global ecumenical movement.”
Said WCC’s present director of communications, Marianne Ejdersten, “We are deeply saddened by the news of Mark’s passing. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends. The ecumenical movement has lost one important global peace journalist with a special passion for photo journalism and audio visual production. “
Beach’s time at the WCC overlapped the general secretariats of Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia and the Most Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit. His tenure brought increased attention to news and social media, as well as video production and a new visual identity, and he negotiated a successful publishing arrangement with journals giant Wiley Blackwell. Financial pressures also entailed inventive yet sometimes painful revamping of WCC communications functions, including overhauling distribution of WCC Publications, closing Ecumenical News International, consolidation of the WCC Library to the Bossey Institute, reworking of translation services, closing the onsite bookstore, and moving toward external technical maintenance of the WCC website.
A highlight of Beach’s communications era was the communications operation he led at the WCC’s 10th Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea, in late 2013. The pastel assembly symbol was omnipresent there in banners and signage. He brought several dozen journalists to Busan, joined by an equal number of Korean journalists. Alongside an intense news-writing schedule, the team published a daily newspaper, issued frequent video reports and features and interviews, issued a stream of social media posts, made arrangements for the dozens of media attending and reporting on the assembly, and mounted an onsite bookstore with hundreds of titles from WCC Publications and the Christian Literature Society of Korea.
Personable in manner, and an inveterate traveler and photographer, Beach’s work took him around the world, especially in Africa and Asia, where he documented people, churches, and cultures for relief agencies and international organizations. As director of communications for MDS, he travelled frequently to sites of disaster and recovery in the US, spotlighting the difficult work of MDS’s dedicated volunteers.
Mark Beach was the fourth of seven children, and he is survived by his family, including his wife Naomi Vlok Beach and their children Audrey and Wesley Beach, along with his siblings and their families.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be made in Mark’s honour to Hospice and Community Care, 4705 Old Harrisburg Pike, Mount Joy, PA 17552 or the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute, 2102 Harrisburg Pike, Lancaster, PA 17601.
To send a condolence, please visit Mark’s Memorial Page at www.CremationPA.com.
Additional tributes to Mark Beach:
“Mark was always a staunch supporter of the concept of ‘communication for all,’ recognizing that WACC acted as a bridge between the ecumenical movement and civil society. He supported WACC’s efforts to draw young people into the ambit of genuine communication and dialogue for peace and he collaborated with WACC on the ‘Busan Statement’ on communication that preceded the WCC Assembly in South Korea where WACC and WCC encouraged participation by radio journalists from the global South. Most recently, Mark accepted involvement with WACC North America as a member of its standing committee. WACC will always be grateful for Mark’s sharp eye and ear for detail and his generosity of spirit.”—Philip Lee, general secretary, World Association for Christian Communication
“Mark’s integrity and care for others made us see the crucial value of healthy and mutually supportive communication team dynamics. His skills in communication, with a unique approach to the use of images to promote churches’ work for justice and peace, and his vision about the importance of bringing younger and more international communicators to contribute with WCC are some of the highlights of the legacy he leaves behind. Besides professional collaboration, we built a solid friendship. I already miss him very much.”—Marcelo Schneider, WCC communications officer
“Among Mark’s major contributions to the ecumenical movement were hiring decisions he made while at the WCC. And his strategy to create a much younger-than-customary newsroom staff at the Busan assembly is helping to shape the future of the council.”—Theodore A. Gill Jr., former senior editor, WCC Publications
“When a dear friend passes away, the first instinct is to mourn. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do. In the case of Mark Beach, mourning would not suffice. Mark lived. Mark loved. Mark forgave. Mark laughed. Mark packed a lot of living into a relatively short life. When he found out his time here was limited, his top priority was to make sure his family would be taken care of. He reached out to friends and family and made them part of his final journey. In his dying moments, so I was told, he had time for a funny remark. I won’t mourn my friend, I choose to celebrate a life that was fully lived. Mark, I learned this lesson from you – Get on with living.”—South African videographer Coetzee Zietsman, longtime friend and collaborator
“A fluid writer with a journalist’s standards and a photographer’s appreciation for the telling detail, Mark Beach also saw the bigger picture. Many of his initiatives positioned WCC Communications well for the emerging media landscape and for its present flowering. I have especially appreciated his vision for publications.”—J. Michael West, former publisher, WCC Publications
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