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.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)