Early Life
Beck was born in Stockton, California, to Lemuel and Mary (Tierney) Beck. His father was a carpet cleaner. The Becks moved to Seattle, Washington when Dave was 4 years old. The family was poor, and Beck an only child. He attended Broadway High School but was forced to quit high school at the age of 16 in order to go to work.
Dave Beck took a job as a laundry worker, and joined the Laundry Workers International Union. A short while later, he got work as a driver for a laundry truck. He helped organize Local 566 of the Teamsters after a short strike in 1917.
He was drafted in World War I and served as a machinists' mate and gunner in England with the United States Navy.
Read more about this topic: Dave Beck
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“For some men the power to destroy life becomes the equivalent to the female power to create life.”
—Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, ch. 4 (1991)