July 1, 2025 By Eileen McIntyre and Roy Harris
When our dear friend and Hingham neighbor Anne Styles Overbeck died early this month, we asked her West Coast sons Ryan and Mike how we might help them. As Roy had written a local-newspaper story about their dad, James Overbeck, when Jim died years ago, Ryan and Mike agreed that the two of us might write about their mom, as well. Preparing these reflections about Anne has allowed us to relive wonderful times and learn more about this special woman.
Among Anne’s earliest memories was a startling occurrence in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where she was born, and where her father, Ralph Emerson Styles, was stationed as a Navy submarine captain. Anne was then a two-year-old at home with her mother when the bombs fell on Dec. 7, 1941. As recounted by her son Mike, his grandmother once told him how a piece of shrapnel shot through the window, and the curious toddler, Anne, touched it, exclaiming, “HOT!”
Captain Styles was called from their house to take charge of his sub, the USS Narwhal, and prepare it to leave the harbor as soon as the bombs stopped falling. It would be weeks before mother and child knew if he was safe. (He was.) Young Anne and her mom, as civilians, soon had to leave Hawaii for the duration of the war.
Communication (by letter) with Anne’s dad would be limited while his sub stayed engaged in the Pacific. As the two of us heard in the StoryCorps oral history that Eileen recorded with Anne in 2017, [LINK: https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/anne- overbecks-early-life-as-a-navy-brat-may-be-key-to-her-adventurous-spirit-and-openness-to-the-world/] her mom, Elizabeth Walton Styles, worried for their safety during the war. But it was also clear that Anne, as a youngster, already was learning lessons of problem-solving and resilience—lessons that would continue as her dad’s post-war Navy career brought with it frequent family relocations. With those moves, and schooling in a variety of places for Anne and her sister Linda, born after the war, came life lessons about making friends quickly, and adjusting to new environments. (10 new schools for Anne before she completed high school.)
Anne would take that adaptability into her adult life. She met and later married Jim Overbeck, a physicist, engineer and inventor, when she worked in an office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught. She soon became a busy mom to three sons—and, later, thrived as an active, independent senior based in Hingham, with a love of travel that ran deep.
Recalls Mike: “When my big brothers were off in college, there were some road trips with just me and my mom. I remember one trip, after my grandmother died. Grandpa gave his car to us, so we flew down to Florida to get it, and drove it back up to Hingham.
We had stops in North Carolina to see some of mom’s Styles cousins, and we toured Washington, D.C., and saw all the monuments and the Smithsonian Museum and zoo together. We made a good traveling team.”
Several years after the 2009 death of Anne’s husband of four decades, she traveled to Tokyo alone, to surprise eldest son James Jr., who lives there. When Anne told us of that trip, Eileen, who once traveled to Yokohama on business, was impressed that Anne, in her 70s, had easily negotiated Japan’s busy train system. Perhaps James, who knew his mom as an adventurer, was only mildly surprised when she buzzed his intercom to announce her unexpected visit.
Says Anne’s son, Ryan: “She really threw herself into being a mom. Lots of creative activities, arts and crafts, playing pretend, and hand-made Halloween costumes. Mom would join us, and often a gang of neighborhood children, for games, or sledding down the hill in front of our house in winter. Together we explored the yard, the neighborhood, and World’s End, the nature preserve nearby.” Anne also spent years as a Cub Scout troop leader, and with Hingham’s Foster School PTA. Ryan feels fortunate to have witnessed “Grannie Annie” interacting with his own young children.
In Siesta Key, where she spent more time after Jim died, Anne became a trained volunteer with The Healing Mission, an outreach prayer ministry of St. Boniface Episcopal Church. Cynthia Sand, director of the Mission, said, “Anne had a wide-open loving heart. It was a privilege to pray with her.”
Diane Erne knew Anne when both lived at the Whispering Sands Condominiums. Diane remembers her as always helpful to older seniors in the complex and staying active in issues impacting the community. For seven years, Diane told us, Anne was involved with “Save Our Siesta Sand 2,” a campaign involving a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers—with residents seeking to save the beach from dredging of the shoal protecting the Key. The campaign didn’t succeed, Diane noted, but Anne’s determination and fighting spirit—perhaps inspired by her dad’s legacy of involvement in the community—aren’t forgotten. Anne’s dad is honored with a plaque in the center of Siesta Key. As a widower, Capt. Styles, who had installed a tall flagpole near his cottage at the Siesta Key beach, began a sundown service to honor veterans, complete with a bugler and drummer. When her dad died, Anne made sure the tradition continued at a nearby pier. It is ongoing today.
In both Massachusetts and Florida, friends marveled at Anne’s inquisitiveness—and her readiness to learn new things. Says Wayne Eckerson, who lived down the street from her, and is a parishioner at Anne’s Hingham church, St. John’s Episcopal: “One thing I loved about Anne was her curiosity, including her interest in spiritual topics.” She joined three book groups Wayne led at the church. “She studied Zen Buddhism and meditation, among other things,” he adds. “She was a volunteer teacher of English as a second language. She learned about hypnotism, and water divining.” In all, he says, “Anne’s interests and hobbies were many, and so varied!” According to Mike, a professional animator: ”My parents were always supportive of me and my constant tendency to draw. So, I was delighted when my mother took up Chinese brush painting. She got really good! She had an innate sense of good composition.” Also an excellent photographer, Anne created for the two of us a beautiful photo book she created after we three took a Baltic cruise together in 2015.
A trained docent, as well, Anne gave tours in the Boston area to cruise-travelers visiting the city. At the time of her death, she was serving as treasurer of the Greater Boston Tour Guides Association.
Anne was a caring sister to Linda, who died in 2014, and a great support to many others. Ryan told us about some families Anne helped over the years—including immigrants who’d come from the former Soviet Union, and from the Middle East. Anne helped get them set up, including providing English lessons. “She was a person who felt strongly for people in tough situations, and worked hard to help,” he said. One who got a large measure of Anne’s loving attention was her friend Carol McPherson, whom she had met when they were both students at Pennsylvania’s Westminster College. Carol adopted three orphaned girls from India, and Anne was a devoted godmother to one of them. Later, Anne helped Carol herself get the care she needed, as Carol declined with Alzheimer’s disease.
In a note to his St. John’s Hingham congregation, Rev. Ed Thornley quoted a parishioner who said: “Everyone who knew Anne will attest that she was a gentle soul with a heart of gold.”
We will keep her in our hearts, where she will continue to inspire us. Friends and family will gather at services at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hingham on Saturday, July 19 at 11 a.m. This will follow a June 27th service in Anne’s winter home, Siesta Key, Fla., where she died, at 85, on June 3.
—Eileen McIntyre and Roy Harris are a retired couple who have been neighbors and friends of the Overbeck family for more than 20 years.