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One of the most active foundries in the
charter of the Ductile Iron Society was Morris Bean & Company.
The signature of William Beatty, one-time Morris Bean & Company
President, appears on the Articles of Incorporation, signed in June of
1958. At Morris Bean, the technical research and development was
headed by Xarifa Bean for over 39 years. Many of you will remember
her dedication to the ductile iron industry and the Society. We are
sad to report that Xarifa passed away in September of this year and the
following obituary was submitted by Morris Bean & Company.
OBITUARY
Xarifa Sallume Bean, 91, former Chairman, CEO and Co-founder, with her husband Morris, of Morris Bean & Company, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Her commitment to Morris Bean & Company, and the industry, began in 1931 upon her graduation from Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. She continued her active involvement with Morris Bean & Company for over seventy years until shortly before her death on September 25, 2001. For over 39 years Mrs. Bean headed the company's technical research and development efforts. She held six patents for foundry processes, including groundbreaking developments in resin bonded sand. In recognition of her many contributions to the industry she was selected as a Charter Inductee of the Foundry Management and Technology Hall of Honor in 1992. Over the years Mrs. Bean received many honors and awards from the foundry industry and the community in which she lived. For more information about Mrs. Bean's life and career go to the news section of MorrisBean.com
XARIFA SALLUME BEAN
Xarifa Sallume Bean, one of the founding group of Morris Bean & Company of Yellow Springs, Ohio, died at her home, Tuesday, September
25. She was 91 years of age.
Born October 3, 1909, in Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio, she was the daughter of Louise and Shibly Sallume. She was named Zareepha Louise Sallume, after the sister of her Syrian father. She and her brother, David Sallume, spent their childhood with her mother's family in Palo and Battle Creek, Michigan, until she came to Yellow Springs in 1926 to attend Antioch College.
The day after receiving her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Antioch in 1931, Xarifa married Morris Bean, thus beginning her lifelong commitment to her work and family. Morris had graduated from the college the year before and was managing what was then the Antioch Art Foundry, one of Antioch's student industries established by Arthur Morgan in the mid-1920s. The foundry was engaged in casting art objects and architectural sculptures in bronze.
A pioneer in the foundry industry, first as a woman, and then in research, design and corporate leadership, Xarifa spent 39 years as head of the company's technical research and development team. She held six patents for foundry processes, including a process for resin-bonded sands that is still used in aluminum and other metal casting that requires extreme precision of parts.
Before WWII the foundry had been purchased by General Motors. In 1946, Morris, Xarifa and a group of associates purchased the business, selected Morris Bean as president, and formed Morris Bean & Company. By then the company had begun expanding its technical achievements to the production of highly engineered castings for the industrial market.
Upon the sudden death of her husband in 1970, Xarifa was elected president and CEO of the company. In 1977, she retired from that position to become chairman of the board, a position she held until 1985. She continued as a board member, consultant and problem solver until shortly before her death.
She served on several other boards, including the Miami Deposit Bank, Antioch University (1980-1987), and the Advisory Board of Dartmouth Institute, a Dartmouth College program that offered business leaders refresher courses in the humanities.
A review of her honors does not adequately reflect the significance of her professional and community contributions, in large measure because she was a truly modest and private person. She was reluctant in 1995 to accept induction into the Greene County Women's Hall of Fame, ultimately acknowledging, "Women do need more recognition for their contributions to the human experience."
She was twice recognized by Antioch College - with an honorary doctor of science degree in 1952 and the Arthur Morgan Award from the Alumni Association in 1988. In 1982, the YWCA selected her to receive the Salute to Career Women Award, and in 1992 she was named to the Foundry Management and Technology Hall of Honor.
She had many and various interests, including needlework, theater, travel, international political and economic news, and gardening. Her first major at Antioch was fine arts. She studied with artist Robert Whitmore and for several years designed the greeting cards that she and her husband sent at Christmas.
From her co-op days in New York City, she witnessed history - the building of the George Washington Bridge and the stock market crash on Wall Street. Of the latter she wrote, "I was forced to reflect on my fortune and my misfortune. I learned directly for the first time about jolting unemployment, vulnerability of established institutions, speculation and risk, artificial and real values, critical and peripheral places in services to society."
More than 15 years later, in a letter to the General Motors Corporation, she spoke for the Morris Bean & company stockholder group in declining the opportunity to become a permanent part of GM:
"It seems to us that the continuance of the best elements of our American industrial system depends to a great degree on the presence of a vigorous growth of small businesses where owner-managers can have the full experience of business enterprise ... If young people in small communities can see examples of small owner-managed enterprises where high standards of product, employer relations, and business dealings are coupled with a measure of business success in the long pull, it will influence the level of self-reliance, resourcefulness, initiative and inventiveness of the people of these communities. It is our hope that we can have a business that can set such an example."
A woman of personal integrity, community commitment, high professional standards and basic family values, Xarifa Bean promoted, by her example, one of her favorite phrases of Arthur Morgan, "the habit of excellence."
She was preceded to death by her husband, her brother, David Sallume, her oldest daughter, Anita Bean Newman, a grandson, Leonard Bean, and a sister-in-law, Blanche Bean.
Her four children, Doris Bean, Leslie Kern, Rodney Bean and Hadley Bean, and their families, which include eight grandchildren, and her sister-in-law, Ruth Bean, survive her.
Contributions may be made in her memory to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation, the Tecumseh Land Trust or Antioch College.
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