Ex-Teamsters Boss Dave Beck, 97, `Still One Hell Of A Man'

It seems like I have known Dave Beck for 100 years, although that is impossible, because Beck himself was only 97 last Sunday.

My first meeting with Dave was with Charlie Burdell, the late great Seattle attorney, who had performed legal miracles on Dave's behalf. Charlie defended Beck during his trial in federal court in Tacoma.

Anyway, Charlie got Beck off on a number of charges, but Dave did go to McNeil Island in 1962. He was convicted of two counts of filing false income-tax returns for the Teamsters Union; he was convicted on a state charge of misusing $1,900 from the sale of a union-owned Cadillac.

He served half of his 5 1/2-year sentence and later Gov. Albert Rosellini gave him a state pardon, and then, in 1975, Gerald Ford granted him a full presidential pardon.

For those of you who like your history with neat little twists, Burdell's assistant in the Beck trial was a young attorney named William F. Dwyer, now a federal judge in Seattle.

Because he liked Dave, the Beck defeat hit Charlie hard. Burdell and Dave and I used to meet for breakfast up at George's Cafe, a fine Greek place that got wiped out by the freeway.

So on his birthday last Sunday - Father's Day - a few of Dave's family and friends had a small dinner party for him at Canlis'. I dropped by to pay my respects and left. Later, one of Dave's close friends, Dick Klinge, laughed as he told me about Beck's 97th birthday.

The Teamsters, it seemed, had invited Beck to their big international convention this year. This event is held once every five years.

Klinge remembers: "Dave told them he couldn't make it this year, but he said he'd be sure to attend the next convention. By then he'd be 102."

That Sunday evening I thought a lot about Dave Beck. In those days, the full fury of anti-labor papers, radio and TV, plus magazines, particularly Time, made Dave seem like Public Enemy Numero Uno. There had been the televised Senate rackets hearings, with Bobby Kennedy snapping at him like a tousle-haired terrier.

Kennedy's hostile posturing had not a hell of a lot to do with the public good. He was out to get his brother elected president. He exploited Beck to make the Kennedys look moral, upright and crusading.

A lot of money has flowed into Swiss banks since then. In the '70s and '80s, we developed a species of genuine, pure-bred sleaze bags - money grubbers, power brokers, inside traders, corporate-takeover artists and big-bucks swindlers.

The next morning I called Dick Klinge and said, "You know, these guys today make Dave Beck look like a St. Mark's Cathedral choirboy."

"They sure do," he said.

And speaking of St. Mark's Cathedral, if it wasn't for Dave Beck, who stepped in and saved it, the lovely old building would today be some kind of an owl sanctuary. Dave had power - big power then - and he used his muscle, meaning persuasive power, and his own money to save it.

He was Seattle - all Seattle - the original rain-soaked kid. As a young boy, he shot rats for bounty near the University Bridge to bring home money to his mother. He delivered papers all over First Hill.

He would get his dinner in the free-lunch saloons because a kindly cop let him do it. He ran errands for the whores in the old Skid Road district (now Pioneer Square) and it was only later that he found out (to his mother's horror) that he was running dope for the hookers.

When he became International Teamsters president in the 1950s, he had to spend a lot of time in Washington. The Washington sophisticates were appalled, then amused, because Dave proudly showed off his Elks pin at formal dinners.

They could not figure him out when he said, "I'd rather lean against a lamppost in Seattle than own this whole goddamned city."

When he made Teamsters president, he took $8 million of union funds in Indianapolis banks and transferred the money to Seattle First National Bank. In those days, this was one great shot in the arm for the local economy.

He loved being accepted in the business community. And it hurt him, after McNeil Island, when he had continuing tax troubles, that business leaders kept their distance from him. He once confided to me, "I put all that Teamster money in Seattle First, but now I can't borrow a plugged nickel from them."

He had power and money then. He raised money and used his own money to build swimming pools for the YWCA, and again for the YMCA. He helped Seattle Pacific College and Ballard General Hospital. He raised money for the Ryther Child Center and, of course, for the March of Dimes.

He raised money, but used a lot of his own, to buy a big house up on Capitol Hill. This house was to be used by parents of servicemen who couldn't afford hotels when they came to visit their sons during World War II.

Along with Sen. Warren Magnuson, Beck had much to do with founding University Hospital. He raised money for servicemen, the Associated Boys Clubs, Seattle University; also for the United Good Neighbor Fund, now United Way.

He used Teamster money to build affordable housing for World War II service veterans. Not many people know this, but Dave Beck, because he loved baseball and because he thought baseball was good for his city, succeeded in persuading millionaire brewer Emil Sick to buy the old Seattle Indians.

Sick built a modern new ballpark and the team, rechristened Rainiers, entered the glory years of pennant-winning baseball in Seattle. Beck seldom missed a game.

Father John Sneeringer came to Dave and told him that his school, Bellarmine High, was literally broke and might have to close. Dave raised $24,000 to bail the school out.

Back in 1953, Children's Orthopedic had just opened its new hospital out on Sand Point Way, but there remained the enormous task of moving the children from their old Queen Anne Hill quarters.

Once again, the muscle. Literally hundreds of union taxicabs and many trucks descended on the hospital. They moved the kids and all of the hospital equipment in 48 hours. Gratis.

Dave is still garrulous, bombastic and often dominating, and his speech as always, is salted with "damns" and "hells," but he would never, never use the kind of four-letter words that are so much in vogue today. He never smoked and never drank, although now, at his doctor's suggestion, he might sip a little wine before dinner.

He still climbs aboard his exercycle each morning, but he has given up the long brisk walks he used to enjoy. He naps a lot during the day.

"The old man has slowed up a bit," Dick Klinge said, "but he's still quite a guy, still one hell of a man."

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.