Marshall Jones "Skip" Beebe

Marshall Jones “Skip” Beebe suffered a stroke on Monday evening, November 7, 2011. Following a wonderful weekend reunion with lifelong friends, Skip and wife Anne returned to Atlanta excited about the commencement Monday of the global Corenet real estate conference. After a lifelong career devoted to real estate and education, Skip spent an engaging afternoon on a panel discussing innovations and technology. For an educator the last 20 years of his professional tenure, spending the day surrounded by his beloved clients, colleagues and students could not have been more fulfilling.

Skip was a longtime executive with CBRE Group, Inc. serving in a variety of positions from 1994 until his retirement in 2007 as Chief Learning Officer, responsible for the company’s professional development activities. It was with CBRE that he formally launched his education career. Upon creation of Beebe Interests, he continued to serve as a mentor and counselor to many CBRE professionals. During his 35-year career in real estate industry, he also worked as senior vice president of Cousins Properties, President of Mobil Land Development Corporation, and was President of Dutch-owned Wilma Southeast.

He was an active member of the Atlanta business community, including serving as a trustee of the Leadership Atlanta program, and working with the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. He also served as President and Trustee of the Society of International Business Fellows program, President of the Atlanta Urban Land Institute and Council Chairman of the International Committee and Director of the Enterprise Bank. He also served on other boards.

Turning retirement into what he liked to call “rewirement,” Skip combined his interests in real estate and mentoring. Since 2009, he has been thoroughly engaged in teaching as the Ledbetter Professor of the Practice of Real Estate Development at his alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology. Always an eager and curious student of life and people, Beebe has cited the job at Georgia Tech as his favorite calling. He often said he considered the students his teachers and that he learned more in two years there than in his entire real estate career.

Born February 18, 1944 in Memphis, Tenn. Skip moved to Atlanta with his family in 1952 where, as a child, he loved roaming through woods of Druid Hills when he wasn’t rebuilding cars and boats with his friends.

In 1962 he was a member of the last class to graduate from the Marist School’s downtown campus. Friends from that era remember him “flying” to school in a snappy red MG, a forerunner of the many cars he enjoyed driving.

The day after graduating from Georgia Tech in 1966 with a BS degree in industrial management, he married his Agnes Scott College sweetheart, Anne Diseker from Alabama. Skip was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and remained active in recent years.

He is survived by his wife, Anne, their children Thomas Alan Beebe (Paige) and Lane Taylor Beebe Courts (Richard W. IV) and his four grandchildren, devoted to their “Papa”– all of whom live in Atlanta: Grace and Claire Beebe, Winn and Beebe Courts. Also surviving are nephews, Justin and Preston Mayfield, sons of his late sister Lynda Beebe Mayfield.

Travel has been a favorite family pursuit with Skip at the helm, enjoying the planning as much as the adventure. He had already begun plotting itineraries for trips through 2012 and beyond. Among the places he explored were the Baltic, Bhutan, Turkey, Machu Picchu, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brazil and Europe. To celebrate the 40th birthdays of his son and son-in-law, Skip and his son-in-law’s dad took the young men on a golf trip to Pebble Beach and the Cyprus Point Club, and he was thrilled to play Augusta National this year, a gift of one of his Georgia Tech students. Skip was very happy digging in the sand with his grandchildren on Fernandina Beach, taking early morning meditational rows on Lake Rabun, and strolling through the farmers market on Saturdays with his family.

Perhaps to balance his appetite for a wide variety of delicious foods – from flans he sampled worldwide, to pizza with his family at Louie’s on the Lake and his favorite peppermint ice cream – he always had a vigorous workout routine and looked forward to a good steam afterward.

Among the visionary projects Beebe was involved in during his real estate career are Windward, a mixed-use subdivision and office park developed under Mobil Land Development Co., in Alpharetta; Centrum at Glenridge, an office development; 2100 Riveredge Parkway in Sandy Springs and Tradeport, a mixed-use development located near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Jacksonville’s airport.

Beebe thoroughly enjoyed the friendships made and cultivated through his memberships of the All Saints Episcopal Church and the Piedmont Driving Club.

He will be remembered as a quintessential professional, an inspiring teacher and leader, a loyal and trustworthy friend, a devoted husband, father and grandfather. In all of those roles, professionally and personally, he was a problem solver and trusted advisor. In the face of a child’s misadventure or a colleague’s missed mark, Skip often said and firmly believed that, “Adversity builds character.”

There will be a memorial service Thursday, Nov. 10, at 2 p.m. at All Saints’ Episcopal Church, 634 West Peachtree Street. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that gifts be made to the Georgia Tech Foundation, 760 Spring Street, NW, Suite 400, Atlanta, GA 30308 or to the Marist School, 3790 Ashford Dunwoody Road, NE, Atlanta, GA 30319.