Jonathan Scott Beacher ^{2 3 4}

   FamilySearch ID: L8BH-BS9.

  General Notes:

An interesting quirk is that his mother and father are both descended from the same Knerr family! His maternal grandmother was Katie Knerr and his paternal 4th great grandmother was Maria Magdalena Knerr.

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Newspaper: Morning Call: The John H. Beachers Have Second Son, 25 Feb 1949, Allentown, Lehigh, PA. ⁴ The John Henry Beachers Parents of Son
Mr. and Mrs. John Henry Beacher of Teaneck, N. J. became the parents of their second son, Jonathan Scott, on Feb. 14 in the Holy Name hospital, Teaneck. The infant weighed 8 pounds. His 3-year-old brother David is visiting the maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Bury, 26 N. West St., and the paternal grandparents Mr. and Mrs. B. J. Beacher, 1935 Green St. The mother is the former Isabel Bury.

2. Residence: 80 Prior Ct., Oradell, NJ 07649 from 1957 to 1967 in Oradell, Bergen, NJ. ⁵

3. Newspaper: The Record, 1 May 1961, Hackensack, Bergen County, NJ. ⁶ -----
400 IN ORADELL AT LOOP OPENER
-----
Mayor Wendel Throws Out First Ball To Begin Play
-----
Oradell -- The Little League opened its season yesterday at the Memorial Park field. Mayor Fred E. Wendel threw out the first ball. Leslie G. Gerdts, league president, introduced Joseph Cast of the Connie Mack League; James H. Lloyd, president of the Babe Ruth League; Andrew Corrinet, district representative for the Little League; and Mrs. Angus MacLeod, chairman of the Recreation Commission. Approximately 400 persons were on hand for the ceremonies. David and Jonathan Beacher played the national anthem on their trumpets.

4. He was educated at Michigan State University from 1967 to 1971 in East Lansing, Ingham, MI, USA.

5. Residence: 2950 Creek Park Drive, Marietta, GA 30062 from 1976 to 1979 in Marietta, Cobb, GA, USA.

6. Residence: 5596 Fox Hunt Lane, West Bloomfield, MI 48322 from 1980 to 1984 in West Bloomfield Twp., Oakland, MI.

7. Newspaper: Philadelphia Inquirer: Will TV Terminal Ever Find A Home?, 30 Jun 1982, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA. ⁷ Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
June 30, 1982
Edition: WB
Section: BUSINESS
Page: D10

WILL TV TERMINAL EVER FIND A HOME?

Author: LARRY REIBSTEIN
Article Text:
By Larry Reibstein
Inquirer Staff Writer

NEW YORK - Here's what things will be like in the home of the future, according to the optimist:
You're sitting around the house with nothing much to do and remember it's about bill-paying time. So you stroll over to the TV set, switch on the terminal next to it, sit down at the special keyboard and type in the commands that direct your bank to pay the electric and gas bills, the department store charges and the mortgage.
Later that evening you decide you need to buy a lawn mower. On your TV screen, you call up some pictures and prices of various lawn mowers, then order one by pressing a few buttons.
You also want to know how the Phillies did, so you call up the sports news and peruse it.
And now the pessimist's viewpoint:
When you want to pay your bills, you'll still sit down and laboriously write those checks, go buy stamps and send the checks through the mail. You'll go to a store to buy a lawn mower, and you'll turn on your radio for the evening news or buy a newspaper to get the sports news - exactly as you do today.
Who's right? Who knows. But many large companies are betting
that the much- talked-about home information revolution is finally on its way.
About 50 members of that fledgling industry gathered here for their second conference this week, showing off their video-display terminals, computers and fancy graphic displays.
The technology of delivering information and services directly to the home is known as videotex. It allows a consumer to tap information in large computers at distant locations via telephone lines or cables.
The information is presented in a textual format on a consumer's TV set or a special terminal. By using a keyboard, videotex allows the user to ''interact" with the service - that is, call up the specific subject desired.
Although videotex services are more advanced in England and Europe, they are only in trial tests in various cities in this country.
The reason for the slow pace here is that no one yet knows for sure whether consumers want videotex services, how much they would be willing to pay or in what format they would like them delivered.
Indeed, this is probably one of the few conventions of companies who haven't recruited a single paying customer yet.
"We are convinced there is a demand for videotex. We just don't know how big," said John Woolley of Viewdata Corp. of America Inc. Viewdata is a subsidiary of Knight-Ridder Newspapers Inc., which owns The Philadelphia Inquirer.
However, one analyst in the field, Howard Anderson, president of the Yankee Group, a Cambridge, Mass., market-research firm, thinks otherwise.
"This convention has the smell of death," he said, standing somewhat paradoxically at his firm's own exhibition booth. "Videotex is a non- business. I don't think the consumer will ever pay any money for this."
Anderson said he wondered why, after five years of testing, companies have yet to offer the service commercially.
He said he believes that the reason was consumers will not pay the estimated $40 a month merely to read news or weather on their TV sets, or even to do their banking from home.
"Entertainment will drive this market - not home information," he said.
But others here say the testing period will soon come to a halt and commercial videotex services will begin.
"I think the bigger players are starting to make their presence felt in what had been a very entrepreneurial business," Woolley said. He cited CBS, American Telephone and Telegraph and Time Inc., each of which has announced
plans to enter the videotex business as either an information-provider or a transmitter of information.
"Videotex is a mass of services," he said. "You get the latest news and weather. You can bank, shop, play games - perhaps to the likes of the video game variety. It's educational; you get quizzes. You can have electronic mail."
But even some of the companies dabbling in videotex wonder about its need.
Chemical Bank in New York, for example, is spending millions of dollars on a system that would allow the customers to pay bills and do other financial transactions through a home computer terminal.
But at the conference here, William Cornfield of Chemical told the gathering: "The market for videotex does not exist. What we're saying is we hope to help make it exist."
The financial advantages for banks like Chemical are clear, he said. It costs the bank 35 cents to $l to process one check, a cost that would be reduced sharply through a bank-at-home system.
E.F. Hutton, the securities firm, also is testing a videotex service, but mostly for its brokers, not for customers.
"We know it works," said Lee Greenhouse, "but is it relevant to our business?"
However, other companies, particularly newspaper publishers that are worried about losing advertising to the electronic medium, are apparently forging ahead in videotex services.
Videotex of America, a joint venture of the Times-Mirror Co., a newspaper publisher, and Infomart, a Toronto videotex company, began just last month a test for residents in two California communities. In that test, as in previous ones, terminals allowing access to central computers are given for free to the users.
Viewdata said it would begin a full-blown videotex service next year in Miami. Subscribers would pay about $40 a month, which includes the cost of leasing the terminal. The company forecast 5,000 paying customers by the end of 1983.
Judging by the exhibits here, foreign countries are far more excited about videotex. Large companies from France, England and Japan set up elaborate displays of home terminals and computers.
But the most enthusiastic comments came from an American market researcher, who was trying to sell a study of videotex to the companies at the convention.
"This (videotex) is going to blow up," said Jonathan Beacher of Reymer & Gersin Associates of Detroit. "The Christmas of 1984, people will be lining up to buy the service."
That view, of course, was open to debate.

Copyright (c) 1982 The Philadelphia Inquirer.

8. Residence: 520 Flying Scot Way, Alpharetta, GA 30005 from 1985 to 1998 in Alpharetta, Fulton, GA.

9. Newspaper: Atlanta Journal Constitution: Prodigy: A Computer Service For the John and Mary Yuppies, 7 May 1989, Atlanta, Fulton, GA. ⁸ The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution
May 7, 1989
Edition: The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Section: BUSINESS
Page: E/1


Prodigy: A Computer Service For the John and Mary Yuppies
It's Unlikely to Turn On `Technology Literate'

Author: JONES, ROBERT SNOWDON; Robert Snowdon Jones Staff Writer STAFF
Article Text:
While the 6-month-old Prodigy home computer service that's bankrolled by IBM and Sears is making a hit with families that haven't used a computer for more than a game machine, it's having a hard time luring those who are experts with on-line information services.
"For people who are used to getting large amounts of data, Prodigy is pretty sparse," said David J. Colmans, an Atlanta resident who runs a special interest group on the Compuserve data base and is a frequent user of several information services.
He said the news and other information on the system are little more than headlines compared to the full text of Associated Press stories he can get on other services.
While he concedes that Prodigy has done a good job using graphics to make the software easy for the uninitiated, the fancy pictures make the program move at a snail's pace.
"At this stage, it is rather slow," said Mr. Colmans, director of communications for Atlanta-based Management Science America Inc.
Strange as it may seem, Prodigy Services Co., a partnership of Sears and International Business Machines Corp., isn't perturbed by reports such as Mr. Colman's.
"We're not targeting the technology literate," said Ross S. Glatzer, Prodigy's senior vice president of membership marketing. "We designed Prodigy for the first-time user. It is a consumer product. We're out to get millions of persons."
"Prodigy has positioned itself for John and Mary Yuppie," said Gary H. Arlen, president of Arlen Communications Inc., a Bethesda, Md., consulting firm. "They're going after the upper-middle class, where people aren't computer experts, but they buy computers for their kids' education or to do home business."
The Jonathan S. Beacher family of Alpharetta is a model family as far as Prodigy is concerned. Upscale, well-educated, literate and unafraid to try something new, they define the segment of the mass market that Prodigy is targeting.
Mr. Beacher said he saved $1,500 on a new car he bought simply by using his computer and telephone to tap into a Consumer Reports story about buying new cars and sent in for an offer that gave him a dealers' price list.
Using the same service, Mr. Beacher's wife, Debbie, avoids the lines at the supermarket by getting Kroger to deliver her list of staples every two weeks.
Brandon, 12, and Scott, 13, the two Beacher children, can't wait to get off the school bus to check their "electronic" mailboxes for messages from friends they've met on the Prodigy service, said Mr. Beacher, who works out of his home as an audience marketing consultant for television stations.
"It becomes a part of your life, quite quickly," Mr. Beacher said.
Several electronic information systems that appeal to hobbyists and businesses are available, the largest being H&R Block's Compuserve and Dow Jones & Co. Inc.'s News/Retrieval.
But several other ambitious experiments to tap the mass market have failed. One of the biggest was attempted in the early 1980s by no less than American Telephone & Telegraph Co. and Knight-Ridder. Another experiment by Times-Mirror Co. also failed.
Prodigy is still small and it's too early to tell if it will be the national home service envisioned by its backers, analysts said.
Officially started in October in Atlanta, San Francisco and Hartford, Conn., the service now also serves New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. All of California will be on the system by the end of October, Prodigy officials said. By the end of the year, it will be available to 40 percent of all U.S. households.
The partners have poured millions into Prodigy - as much as $600 million by some estimates - and IBM doesn't plan to make any money off the service until sometime in the 1990s.
Prodigy says that so far it has signed up 50,000 households comprising about 70,000 users, a paltry number compared with Compuserve's 500,000. But some analysts say that's not a bad showing for a service that has been available for only six months.
"I'm giving it a 60-40 chance now," said Mr. Arlen. "Last year I said 50-50."
Prodigy conducted extensive market research and scrutinized the information gleaned from the failure of its predecessors, Mr. Arlen said, adding that the service still needs a lot of refinement, he said.
Mr. Colmans said some of the convenience features of the service are too rigid. He wouldn't mind ordering his groceries on-line from Kroger, for example, but he would rather pick them up at the store when he does his regular shopping. One doesn't have a choice right now, he said.
As for the convenience features, Mr. Glatzer said Prodigy is constantly trying to update the services at the request of users.
One feature that even the expert user appreciates on Prodigy is the way it interacts with the operator.
"They did a very fine job of putting the software together and they are doing a good job of deploying it," said Eric Arnum, a telecommunications analyst for International Resource Development Inc. of Stamford, Conn. "The way the screens look, the way you move around in the service is excellent."
Most information services require the user to learn arcane codes and know a lot about how the computer works. The Prodigy service dishes up its fare using attractive color graphics and by replacing arcane codes with "buttons" on the screen that can be selected with a cursor.
The service also differs from most of its predecessors by charging a flat $9.95 fee per month instead of by the minute or hour. Some services, such as home banking through Citizens and Southern National Bank, cost $4.95 extra per month.
Mr. Beacher had tried Compuserve but didn't like it because of the way users are billed.
"The problem using it is that you're a nervous wreck because the meter is ticking all the time," he said. "I would get bill shock at the end of every month."
Prodigy intends to copy newspapers and magazines by supporting the bulk of its service through advertising and promotions. Each time a new screen comes up, it has a strip at the bottom touting a product from one of its sponsors. The user can select a button that lets him look at the ad.
Both advertisers and service providers, such as Sears and JC Penney, do loss-leader promotions to get users to try out their wares.
Even expensive items have sold well so far. Datavue Corp., a Norcross-based maker of portable computers that cost upwards of $900, ran a promotion and was surprised at the response, said Valerie Ward, Datavue's marketing director. Customers filled out order forms on-line after viewing drawings of the computer on the screen and seeing a rundown on features.
Mr. Beacher's favorite timesaver on the Prodigy service is the American Airlines Eaasy Sabre reservations service. "I'm able to save quite a lot on airfare because I can make better decisions when I can see the whole list of fares," Mr. Beacher said.
He also prefers to do most of his banking on Prodigy. He even switched accounts to Citizens and Southern National Bank from First National Bank of Atlanta so he could get C&S's Homec service.
Mrs. Beacher, who never used a computer before Prodigy, likes the Kroger home delivery shopping service, which currently is available only on the Northside. She browses Kroger's "aisles" on the computer screen, picking out brands and prices as she goes. The list is sent to Kroger and it delivers the goods at specified times.
Mr. Beacher said his boys learned to type because they wanted to correspond with other young people on the Prodigy service. They also play some of the trivia and mystery games available.
The Prodigy service currently is available only for IBM personal computers and IBM-compatible computers. But Mr. Glatzer said that versions for the Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS will be out in the fall and a big promotion is planned to bring that group into the Prodigy fold.
Although family users will remain the prime target for Prodigy's marketing plans, the company is also developing services that meet the needs of business customers, Mr. Glatzer said.
Caption:
The Computer Service At a Glance
- THE COMPANY. Prodigy Services Co., based in White Plains, N.Y., is a partnership of International Business Machines Corp. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. - CUSTOMERS SERVED. 50,000 households; 75,000 total users. - COST. $49.95 for a starter kit (includes three months free service) plus a fee of $9.95 per month. Some of the services cost extra. - CITIES SERVED. Launched service in 1988 to Atlanta, Hartford, Conn., and San Francisco. Since then, it has expanded to New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. - A SAMPLING OF SERVICES. Home banking through C&S; airline reservations; weather reports; home delivery of groceries from Kroger; stock quotes; electronic mail service to other Prodigy users; catalog shopping through department stores and other store.
Copyright 1989 The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution.

10. Newspaper: Atlanta Journal: Alpharetta roads management firm readies work list, 14 Nov 1991, Atlanta, Fulton, GA. ⁹ The firm hired by Alpharetta to manage an ambitious list of road projects to be partially financed with $17.5 million in bonds will have detailed schedules and budgets for each project ready for the City Council by Jan. 15.
Councilman Jonathan Beacher also said Moreland Altobelli and Associates has started working on state-local agreements for jointly funded projects in the program.
The firm predicted that preconstruction activities on all the projects will be under way by the middle of February.
Activists assail Mr. Beacher
Meanwhile, the fallout from the last-minute flurry of campaigning on last week's bond referendum continued at Monday night's council meeting.
Community activists Mary DiGioia and Carol Mento assailed Mr. Beacher for what they termed "unprofessional" conduct in the waning days of the campaign.
In particular, Ms. DiGioia and Ms. Mento were incensed over a letter Mr. Beacher sent to some of his neighbors in the Windward community on the day of the vote in which he described the two women's efforts to defeat the bond issue as "a mud-slinging campaign of lies.''
Fliers create a bit of a ruckus
Mr. Beacher's letter was a response to fliers distributed around the city that said the bond issue would bring about a 20 percent increase in property taxes and implied that Mayor Jimmy Phillips had a financial interest in property that would be affected by road construction.
"I'm sure you were suspicious since the liar's fliers aren't signed with a name and address," Mr. Beacher's letter said. The letter went on to speculate that Ms. DiGioia and Ms. Mento were behind distribution of the literature and then explained that the actual overall property tax increase would fall into the range of 1 to 2 percent.
At Monday night's meeting, Ms. DiGioia and Ms. Mento, who made no secret of their opposition to the proposed road improvements, acknowledged that they were among those distributing fliers.
Women say they feel insulted
Both women said that they were insulted by Mr. Beacher's comments. "I was called a liar and a troublemaker," Ms. Mento said. "It is a sad day when one is called down for expressing an opinion."
"I wonder how many more of his constituents Mr. Beacher will accuse or insult before he has to ask for their votes," Ms. DiGioia said.
Mr. Beacher defended his conduct, saying the letter was an attempt to correct false impressions the fliers may have left in voters' minds. "That flier was so inaccurate that it would have qualified as false advertising under Federal Trade Commission rules," he said. "I was afraid voters would be misled and I wanted to get the facts to as many of them as I could."

Copyright 1991 The Atlanta Journal.

11. Newspaper: Atlanta Journal Constitution: High-profile political consultant draws mixed reviews, 29 Sep 1994, Atlanta, Fulton, GA. ¹⁰ The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution
September 29, 1994
Edition: The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Section: EXTRA
Page: H/1

The victory he helped engineer for his former partner, Commission
Chairman Mitch Skandalakis, launched Jonathan Beacher's career as . . .
Campaign strategist

High-profile political consultant draws mixed reviews

Author: CAMPOS, CARLOS; Carlos Campos STAFF WRITER North Fulton
Article Text:
Almost overnight, Jonathan Beacher became a household name in state Republican politics.
The Alpharetta city councilman had just pulled off what many believed was the impossible: He engineered the winning campaign of Mitch Skandalakis for the chairmanship of the Fulton County Commission, which defeated Martin Luther King III - an incumbent commissioner who carried the name recognition of the nation's most venerated civil rights leader.
At the Republican Party's annual President's Day luncheon this year, he wowed the crowd with a campaign film he produced mocking the state's top Democrat, Gov. Zell Miller.
Buoyed by such hits, and with a $30,000 investment provided by Skandalakis, Beacher and Skandalakis formed their own political consulting firm in January, called the Victory Team.
But after nine months, Skandalakis has withdrawn from the company and said he's in the process of "negotiating a buyout for my resignation." Skandalakis was reluctant to discuss publicly the details of his leaving the company, but said he wasn't pleased with some of Beacher's business decisions, including spending almost $15,000 on computers without his knowledge.
But Skandalakis said his primary reason for leaving is that Beacher ignored his warning not to become involved in other Fulton County races by doing work work for Bob Fulton's successful campaign to represent north Fulton on the county commission.
`I call them as I see them'
Both men, however, say there's no feud.
"Whoever knows me knows that I call them as I see them," Skandalakis said. "Regardless of whether they are friend or foe."
Headquartered in the basement of Beacher's home in Alpharetta's Windward subdivision, the company has quickly built a client list that has included Republican congressmen Newt Gingrich and John Linder and gubernatorial candidate Guy Millner.
Beacher is also working for several Republican congressional candidates, including Saxby Chambliss in the state's 8th District, Judy Grammer in the 9th and Charles Norwood in the 10th.
The Republican National Committee has also called on the Victory Team to provide it with voter lists, and Beacher said two potential Republican presidential candidates have approached him about the possibility of using his services.
Though the company had some early success, notably Norwood's victory over his opponents in a primary and runoff, it has also had a rocky road at times.
The July primaries weren't kind to at least two of Beacher's clients, congressional candidate Brenda Fitzgerald of Carrollton and Atlanta lawyer Craig Schwall, a candidate for the Public Service Commission, both of whom were soundly defeated.
Others within the Republican Party describe the Victory Team as an elite power clique bent only on controlling party politics, slamming the door firmly in the face of other Republicans.
`A ways to go'
Beacher and Skandalakis both dismiss the notion of a power-grabbing clique, blaming the charges on a small faction within the party that is unhappy with their emergence.
"The group of us that has gotten into policing the county . . . really, truly believe that we can make a difference," Beacher said. "But we haven't finished the job yet. We've got a ways to go."
Beacher's clients and others who have worked with him, however, say the former television promotions executive with the Gannett media chain has a knack for getting people to tune in to his television commercials, radio ads and mail-outs.
"Beacher's a marketing genius," said Jim Lovejoy, a Marietta-based Republican political consultant. "And he's going to have his wins and he's going to have his losses, because in this game, nobody wins them all. But more than likely, Charlie Norwood is going to beat [incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep.] Don Johnson. And he's going to help a new congressman get elected. And that's an achievement."
Though he's relatively new on the scene, Beacher appears to have established a gritty, in-your-face style aimed at getting attention.
His ads for the Fitzgerald campaign were criticized by some as negative, characterized by sharp attacks against her opponent, Bob Barr.
`Back from the edge'
"He has kind of an inclination to go for the jugular," said Jim Sieger, a retired Gannett executive who worked with Beacher during their television days and again on the Victory Team. "Sometimes people have to pull him back from the edge. But that's the kind of guy you want, someone you have to tone down, rather than kick.
"In advertising, there's a basic fundamental challenge. And that is, make them look at it."
Beacher acknowledges the sharp edge of some of his work, but said that 70 to 80 percent of his work is positive. But "the sad reality" is that the media will only pay attention to controversial advertising, he said.
"If you want an ad to make news," Beacher said, "you have to throw mud."
Skandalakis, however, said that by working on Fulton County campaigns, Beacher could have hurt his re-election efforts and his work as chairman.
"Jonathan, while going for the jugular, has a tendency to step over the line," said Skandalakis.
Beacher says he's not in the consulting business for the money. He portrays himself as an angry homeowner just fed up with taxes, wasteful spending and government in general.
Former volunteer
"If I wanted to make money, I'd be back working for TV stations," he said. "Why am I [in it]? Government is sick. The stuff that goes on is a lot worse than people imagine. There really is an opportunity to change it."
Before he started the company, Beacher said, much of his work was on a nonpaid volunteer basis, and at times he couldn't afford groceries.
Political consultant Whit Ayres, who also worked for Fitzgerald, complimented Beacher as "quite creative with media."
"He, like many of us, is best when he sticks to things he knows best," Ayres said. "[Which is] media. But he does not know polling."
Two days before Fitzgerald's July primary showdown, Beacher released results of a poll that showed that she would beat Barr by capturing 58 percent of the vote. Fitzgerald lost to Barr, getting only 43 percent of the vote.
Caption:
Color photo: Alpharetta City Councilman Jonathan Beacher / JERRY FINLAY / Staff
Photo: mug of Fulton Commission Chairman Mitch Skandalakis / MICHELLE HISKEY / Staff
Copyright 1994 The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution.

12. Residence: 4901 Northside Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30327 from 2001 to 2003 in Atlanta, Fulton, GA.

13. Residence: 129 Hillingdon Court SE, Marietta, GA 30067 from 2003 to 2012 in Marietta, Cobb, GA, USA.

Jonathan married Deborah Jo McClanahan, daughter of Leonard Pope McClanahan Jr. and Peggy Ann McCartney, on 29 Sep 1973 in Reynoldsburg, Franklin, OH.¹ The marriage ended in divorce in Nov 1997. (Deborah Jo McClanahan was born on 5 Oct 1954 in New Philadelphia, Tuscarawas, OH ³.)

Jonathan next married Deborah Jane Benson, daughter of James Henry Benson and Robbie Broome, on 28 Apr 2002 in , , , Grand Cayman Island. The marriage ended in divorce in Jan 2008. (Deborah Jane Benson was born on 4 Mar 1953 in Dalton, Whitfield, GA,^{11 12} died on 18 Feb 2020 ^{11 12} and was buried on 21 Feb 2020 in Dallas, Paulding, GA ^{11 12}.)