James Beard - Personal Life

Personal Life

Julia Child accurately sums up Beard's personal life in a brief description:

Beard was the quintessential American cook. Well-educated and well-traveled during his eighty-two years, he was familiar with many cuisines but he remained fundamentally American. He was a big man, over six feet tall, with a big belly, and huge hands. An endearing and always lively teacher, he loved people, loved his work, loved gossip, loved to eat, loved a good time.

Child's summary makes two significant omissions. The first is that he was homosexual. Beard's memoir states: "By the time I was seven, I knew that I was gay. I think it's time to talk about that now." The second was Beard's own admission of possessing "until I was about forty-five, I guess a really violent temper."

Mark Bittman (who did not know Beard personally) describes him in a manner similar to that of Julia Child: "In a time when serious cooking meant French Cooking, Beard was quintessentially American, a Westerner whose mother ran a boardinghouse, a man who grew up with hotcakes and salmon and meatloaf in his blood. A man who was born a hundred years ago on the other side of the country, in a city, Portland, that at the time was every bit as cosmopolitan as, say, Allegheny PA."

Beard died January 21, 1985, in New York City, New York, United States, of heart failure at the age of 81. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over the beach in Gearhart, Oregon, United States, where he spent his summers as a child.