Dave Beck Dies -- Seattle Man Rose To Become Labor Legend

Dave Beck, who rose from laundry-truck driver to president of the giant International Teamsters Union, died last night at age 99.

He'd been up and alert on Christmas day, laughing with his nephews and talking on a speaker phone, according to an old friend, Dick Klinge.

Once one of Seattle's most celebrated figures - a University of Washington regent, member of the state parole board and confidant of presidents - Beck saw his empire topple during the Senate racketeering investigations of 1957 when, red-faced and angry, he took the Fifth Amendment 142 times.

After serving 2 1/2 years in McNeil Island Federal penitentiary for signing a false income-tax return for his union, Beck returned, still protesting his innocence, to buy and sell property to help pay off $1.2 million in attorneys fees. He said the property sales earned him a lot more than all his years as a union leader, where his top salary was $50,000.

In his later years, the talkative ex-labor leader - who admitted to "busting skulls and bruising knuckles" as a young Teamster organizer - became one of the area's most accessible historical resources. His loud, raspy voice roaring in defense of the free-enterprise system, and its prime ingredient, labor, he devoted countless hours to lecturing high-school and college students about the early days of the labor movement.

John McCallum's sympathetic biography, "Dave Beck," further burnished his image. And when he was honored as Seattle's "Maritime Man of the Year" in 1984, the rehabilitation seemed complete.

"He's a legend with us," Bob Pavolka, president of the Joint Council of Teamsters, said today.

"Look at the jurisdictions we have now," added Ed Tyler, head of Teamsters Local 227, bakery drivers. "Bakery drivers, grocery drivers, the beer industry. He organized whole industries. That's what he meant to the Teamsters."

Beck, barely 5 feet 6, although he cast a large shadow during his heyday, kept himself in excellent physical condition, neither drinking nor smoking. He credited his prison term with extending his life by "at least 10 years," freeing him, for the first time in years, from 16-hour workdays, jangling telephones and banquet food. He became foreman in the canning plant and shed 35 pounds by running daily around the prison track. He never regained the weight.

Born in Stockton, Calif., on June 16, 1894, Beck came to Seattle with his parents when he was 4. He grew up in Belltown, near the laundry where his mother worked. He sold newspapers on First Hill, did some amateur prizefighting and dropped out of school at age 15 to drive a laundry truck. He served in the Navy in World War I.

Postwar, he began his rise through the ranks of the labor movement. He helped break the 1919 Seattle General Strike, spearheaded by the radical Industrial Workers of the World, by persuading his fellow laundry-truck drivers to vote against the strike. All Teamsters, he said, eventually joined in to break the back of the strike.

In 1924, Beck was elected secretary-treasurer of his truck-drivers local, and the following year was hired as a Teamsters organizer.

A Beck contract was regarded as binding, on both sides. There were very few strikes. He brought stability to the various industries he organized. In time, many employers welcomed Beck, who seemed to embody many of the virtues of capitalism.

Beck undertook to improve the image of his labor union, too, donating generously to various causes, especially the Children's Orthopedic Hospital.

When Beck created the Western Conference of Teamsters in 1937, he brought Los Angeles into the fold for the first time. The regional concept of union organizing was hailed as a major breakthrough for unions.

Gov. Mon C. Walgren's appointment of Beck to the University of Washington's Board of Regents outraged some, who noted that he hadn't even finished high school.

But Beck countered that despite his lack of formal education, he was smart enough to run a multimillion-dollar union - he was by then executive vice president of the International Teamsters Union - and he said his ethics were at least equal to those of the pillars of society who sat on various boards around town.

Beck served for five years as a regent, rising to chairman, before resigning over what he said was an ethical issue. He accused Walgren's successor, Gov. Arthur B. Langlie, of holding a secret meeting with the regents in Olympia and excluding Beck and one other board member, a judge. When Beck learned of it, he said, he told the assembled board "to hell with Langlie . . . I don't want to associate with people who sneak around for meetings."

In 1952, Beck was elected by acclamation to succeed Dan Tobin as president of the Teamsters Union. Although his offices were in Washington, D.C., Beck insisted on calling Seattle home, and he made points with the business community by putting much of the union's money in Seattle banks.

The Teamsters indicated a willingness to buy their president a house any place he wished. Since Beck elected to stay in Seattle, the union paid him the then-munificent sum of $137,000 for the Sheridan Beach house he already occupied.

The Sheridan Beach complex had become famous, as much for what it was as for what it was rumored to contain. It consisted of six homes, occupied by Beck's relatives and what were widely rumored as "bodyguards," and it had a swimming pool and a 40-seat theater. Beck said the pool and theater were given to him by friends and he didn't have to pay a nickel for them.

The theater, he said, was a gift from a Hollywood film mogul who had gone to prison for juggling his books to hide a $100,000 ransom payment to free his kidnapped son. "I went over to the White House and put my arm around (President Franklin D.) Roosevelt and explained to him why a man would do that to keep his son from being killed," Beck said. "He got on the phone immediately."

Beck said the film mogul called him after being released from prison and wanted to express his gratitude, "and the next thing I knew, workers were building the theater."

FDR was just one of three presidents who asked him to become secretary of Labor, Beck said. The others were Truman and Eisenhower. He turned them all down, he said, because he didn't care for politics.

For Beck, the sky seemed to be the limit until the U.S. Senate, via the McClellan Rackets Hearings, began an investigation of alleged misuse of Teamster funds in 1957. Under the glare of television cameras, Beck eventually appeared before a Senate committee where he underwent relentless questioning by the committee's legal counsel, Robert Kennedy. Beck took the Fifth Amendment 142 times. Internal Revenue Service audits of union records and Beck's personal finances already had begun.

In the aftermath, the Teamsters were ousted from the AFL-CIO and Beck announced he wouldn't seek re-election to the the union's top job.

When Beck returned home, the IRS was close behind. Beck was charged and convicted of income-tax evasion and filing a false income-tax return on behalf of a local union - a document he never signed, even though, as president, he was responsible for the union. The "evasion" conviction later was overturned. Beck also was convicted on a state charge of grand larceny, involving the sale of a union-owned Cadillac.

Beck said union bookkeepers had kept all the records, and he'd merely signed his name. But he went to prison, nonetheless.

There, he found health if not total happiness. Dorothy Beck, his wife of 42 years, died. His mother died, and the warden said he could attend the funeral only if he were accompanied by guards. Beck said that was an insult, that he'd be under the eye of the press every minute and the guards could wait outside. When the warden refused to relent, Beck declined to attend the funeral. He said it was one of the saddest moments of his life.

Beck said he was visited by FBI agents in prison one day and was told that if he'd cooperate by telling all he knew about Jimmy Hoffa, his successor as Teamsters Union president, his prison term might be reduced. Beck said he refused, telling the agents he'd be happy to talk about Dave Beck but not about Jimmy Hoffa. Shortly thereafter, he said, six months were tacked on to his prison time for what he called a trumped-up infraction.

Beck received a full pardon from Governor Rosellini on the state conviction shortly after being released from prison. President Gerald Ford took care of the federal conviction, with another full pardon, 10 years later.

In 1984, on his 90th birthday, the man who, by virtue of outliving most of his critics, had become a Patriarch of the Labor Movement, was in a forgiving mood - except, he said, toward "Bobby" Kennedy, a man he felt had waged a vendetta against him. But, he added quickly, in his booming voice, "I liked Jack (John F. Kennedy)."

He is survived by his son, Dave Beck Jr. A funeral is scheduled Thursday at 1 p.m. at Bonney-Watson, 1732 Broadway.

TIMES STAFF REPORTER DAVID SCHAEFER CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT.