Beatrice Mountain, 89, league bowler in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania

Beatrice M. Mountain, who died May 25, 2008, at age 89, bowled for more than 45 years, collecting lots of trophies along the way.

The late Brookfield, Ohio, resident and former Women’s Bowling Association officer carried a 160 average when she stopped bowling around 2002.

Bea also was a good golfer and liked fishing. She maintained a keen interest in genealogy from the 1960s until she died.

She was descended from two Revolutionary War soldiers on her mother's side - Abraham Beam and Benjamin Castor.

“We traced her Smith family back to Heptonstall, Yorkshire, England, in the 1600s,” said her only child, Norma Haywood of Burghill. “We were able to trace this common name that far because they were from a remote area of Yorkshire and were the only Smith family in that area.”


The only child of a coal miner and a homemaker who did wallpapering on the side, Bea was born Beatrice Mae Smith in Union Township, Washington County, Pa.

Bea grew up in Mingo, Pa., with the exception of two years during grade school, when her father moved the family to Nelsonville, Ohio, while he looked for work.

The 1936 Monongahela (Pa.) High School graduate met Bill Mountain when she was 16 and he was 19. They crossed the state line into West Virginia to marry on Sept. 16, 1937.

The newlyweds set up housekeeping in a 3-room house with no running water in Courtney, Pa. Bill worked as a machinist during World War II and as an electrician in the coal mines after the war. Bea concentrated on being a homemaker and raising their daughter.

Things changed in 1955. The couple built a house next door to Bea’s parents near Finleyville, Pa., and Bea took a job as a clerk at Mayer's Drug Store in Monongahela. She later held a similar post at Cost’s Pharmacy, also in Monongahela.

In 1978, Bea and Bill retired to Orange City, Fla., where they could fish and golf all year long and spend time with Bill’s three sisters and their husbands.

Bea took that opportunity to reinvent herself. She hated the nickname, “Beechie,” which she had carried for most of her life to that point.

“When they moved to Florida, she told everyone to call her ‘Bea’,” her daughter said. “Dad called her ‘Babe’.”
After her husband’s death in 1996, Bea moved to Brookfield, Ohio, to be near her daughter in Burghill. She continued to bowl in leagues in the Brookfield area until she was 84.

Surviving family:
Daughter, Norma Haywood and her husband Eugene of Burghill; three grandchildren: William Mullen and wife Julie of Alexandria, Ohio, Karen Weber and husband David of Morrow, Ohio, and John Mullen of Niles, Ohio; and four great-grandchildren, Erin, Andrew, Marissa and Savannah.

Burial was at Mingo Cemetery, Finleyville.

Arrangements were by Kegel Funeral Home Inc., Finleyville.

This obituary was based on information provided by the family and originally posted on ObitsOhio.com on May 14, 2009.