Year Honored: 2008
Biography
Once described as “the queen of horseshoe crabs” by Representative George Carey, Pierce-Beck carved out a reputation for herself as one of Delaware’s most influential environmentalists. She was known as a woman focused on “small, incremental successes in her battles against polluters and in support of Delaware’s fragile shoreline.”
Pierce-Beck grew up on the Chesapeake Bay and spent time fishing and learning about native plants from her father. She wanted to become a dancer, though World War II prevented that dream. Instead, she attended business school in Wilmington and began working for the DuPont Co. during the war. Afterwards, Pierce-Beck and her husband Willard Lemar Pierce moved to Dover.
In Dover, Pierce-Beck became involved in the local Republican Party Politics, and began working with former Governor Russell W. Peterson, with whom she worked to pass Delaware’s Coastal Zone Act. She then went on to work as a lobbyist in Washington D.C for the Wilderness Society. After her husband became sick, Pierce-Beck returned to Delaware where she became invested in protecting the Horseshoe Crab as a town councilwoman in Slaughter Beach in the early 1980s. She helped to gain international recognition and regional protection for the horseshoe crab, by urging local officials to allow live horseshoe crabs to return to the Delaware Bay. She was honored by the Delaware Audubon Society, with their Annual Conservation Award in 1997.
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Sources and Additional Readings
Conservation Award. Delaware Audubon. (n.d.). Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://delawareaudubon.org/conservation-award
Grace Pierce-Beck dies at 82 - horseshoecrab.org. (n.d.). Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://horseshoecrab.org/press/2008/10/20081.pdf
- Collections: 2008