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:
“An early dew woos the half-opened flowers”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“The spring is here, young and beautiful as ever, and absolutely shocking in its display of reckless maternity; but the Judas tree will bloom for you on the Bosphorus if you get there in time. No one ever loved the dog-wood and Judas tree as I have done, and it is my one crown of life to be sure that I am going to take them with me to heaven to enjoy real happiness with the Virgin and them.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)