Berdyne (Bea) Halsa Serves as Homefront Pioneer in Fairfield
By Diane Findlay, with information from Paula Schneider and the National Baha’i Archives staff, entered February 2026
Bea Halsa (1901–1998) was a Baha’i from Watertown, South Dakota who spent a couple of years serving as house mother for a dormitory at Parsons College, where there was a flurry of Baha’i activity in the late 1960s. (See more about Parsons College elsewhere on this website.) Students living in that dormitory included Candee Grant, Carol Miller, Donna Cole, Barbara Genge, and Paula Schneider.
As Paula remembers that time, “She was old enough, I think we were a bit much for her to take, though I remember spending hours in her apartment talking. Also, she was present at every Baha’i meeting, though not necessarily speaking much. She did not join the Baha’is who went on the racial equality march that was not legal!”
NOTE: Paula shares other memories of challenges among the young, new Baha’is in obeying the laws and guidance of the Faith. She goes on to say, “I suspect if Bea hadn’t been at Parsons, doing what she could to keep the lid on things, it wouldn’t have been good. At the very least, those of us who were not into noisy… confrontation had a safe, quiet place to go and be with Baha’is.”
Candee Grant remembers Bea as “a lovely lady sent by God to help us when so very much was happening.” She recalls her being “very instrumental and helping to guide and help those newly declared Baha’is deepen and gain a firm foundation in the basics of the Faith.”
Bea is listed, in the Baha’i Annual Reports of the NSA 1959-60, among American pioneers placed in the Western European area between May 1959 and March 1960; her post was in Stavanger, Norway. Her name appears again in the National Baha’i Review, June 1970, published by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’s of the United States, on a list of “Pioneers Settled in United States Goal Countries From Ridvan 1969, Scheduled Through June 10, 1970,” again to Norway. In 1982, Bea made a travel teaching trip to the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, after which she returned to Norway, this time living in Sandnes. So it appears that Bea was an active international pioneer and travel teacher, as well as a homefront pioneer serving briefly in Fairfield.
Here’s a photo, which includes Bea, taken at Parson’s College in 1967, from Baha’i News, published by the NSA of US, September 1967, p.15:
