Jeffrey Fred Beck's Obituary
Jeff died peacefully at home on October 27, 2013, at the age of 70. After a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer in 2008, Jeff continued to live a life rich with family, friends, work, travel, and singing. His final weeks at home were serene, and his gentle and twinkling sense of humor accompanied him to the last days, when he was surrounded by the community of friends and family that comprised his life.
Jeff was born in San Francisco and grew up mostly in rural areas of Ukiah and Lakeport along with three siblings, (Cliff, Kirk, and Karen). The loss of his father when Jeff was three and his mother, after a long battle with degenerative disease, when he was sixteen, gave Jeff a remarkable commitment to making the most of the life he was given and to living true to his highest values of love and kindness. He graduated high school at age sixteen, having skipped two grades along the way. Jeff’s work life began at age ten and he held an incredible variety of jobs over time, including dishwasher, paper boy, line worker in a tin can factory, and private investigator, to name a few.
Jeff met his wife Barbara at UC Berkeley, where Jeff was studying at Boalt Hall Law School and Barbara was earning her teaching credential. Now married 44 years, their circle of friends has expanded but still includes many dear friends made during their first months as a couple.
Jeff received his law degree in 1968 and began a long and successful career as an attorney in San Francisco . In early years he was legal “jack-of-all-trades”, gaining experience in a wide swath of law from estates to trial litigation. Over time, his practice came to focus on serving telecommunications companies in rural areas. For many years Jeff taught business law at St. Mary’s College and John Kennedy University, where his sense of humor and keen intellect kept his students entertained as well as on their toes. Despite an abiding impatience with committee meetings, Jeff was an active and respected voice in his professional circle and in industry groups, and served as board member and for one term as president of the Nevada Telecommunications Association. In 1990, Jeff joined business partners Larry Clark and Dave Musgrave in founding Oregon-Idaho Utilities, a telecommunications company serving rural areas of Oregon, Idaho,and Nevada. The company modernized aging and substandard facilities to better serve those communities and built networks that would support critical broadband connections to the wider world. Jeff became president of OIU in 2006, the same year that his daughter Alison came to work with him at the company, and he was pleased at the opportunity to connect so often and share some of his professional knowledge with the next generation.
He and Barbara have been blessed with a large and active extended family. His son Matthew Beck (Ana) and daughter Alison Beck have between them given Jeff four grandsons (Andres, Alex, Theryn and Rowan), and one granddaughter (Eva), each of whom was a delight to their grandfather. With Barbara, Jeff wove a love of singing into every year of his life, having sung tenor with many of the Bay Area’s major choral groups. International travel often included singing in major European cathedrals, through the Berkshire Choral Festival and on choir tours.
In Spring of 2013, Chora Nova, a Berkeley chorus in which Jeff sang tenor for many years, performed Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, with Jeff’s grandson Andres singing the solo for boy soprano. The gathered audience included many friends and family members in what was a joyful culmination for the final concert Jeff was to sing towards the last stages of his illness.
A celebration of Jeff’s life will be held at First Congregational Church, Berkeley on December 7, 2013, at 10 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to the Jeffrey Beck Memorial scholarship fund of the Piedmont East Bay Childrens Choir (www.piedmontchoirs.org/jeffrey-beck-memorial-scholarship-fund) , or to First Congregational Church of Berkeley.
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