Frank George Beck March 12, 1924-February 28, 2019 Frank George Beck, 94, of Colonia, New Jersey, a Navy veteran of World War II and a former salesman at B. Altman and Company in Short Hills, died on February 28, after a long illness. The son of Frank Beck of Elizabeth and Linda Huber of Pennington, he was born in Elizabeth in 1924. By that time, the Becks had been in America for several generations: his great, great-grandparents, Johann and Eva Beck, emigrated from the Rhineland-Palatinate with their four young sons in the 1840s.
When Frank was three, his father died; a few years later, his mother married Eugene Kittell, who came from a small town near Albany. Eugene adopted Frank and his brothers, John and Charles, and the family moved to Erico Avenue in Elizabeth. The boys attended Jefferson High School, where Frank played on the varsity football team.
A few months after Pearl Harbor, Frank enlisted in the Navy. He maintained the gyroscope on the U.S.S. West Point, a former ocean liner commissioned to ferry soldiers to the front lines in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific, and to transport the wounded home. Designed to carry 1200 passengers in peacetime, the reconfigured ship could handle more than 7600 service personnel, along with its Navy crew.
Aboard the West Point, Frank visited such far-flung ports as Liverpool, Glasgow, Le Havre, Naples, Melbourne and Manila. On his return to civilian life, Frank joined the carpenters union and went to work installing tile and linoleum for a company in Elizabeth. In 1947 he married Gloria Rabig, the daughter of two of his Erico Avenue neighbors.
They had two sons, Frank Gene Beck and Gary James Beck, and in 1952 moved to Colonia, then still in transition from a rural community to a suburban one. Frank took a position at B. Altman in Short Hills in 1968, selling rugs and carpets, and worked there until his retirement in 1986. Having crossed the Atlantic and Pacific so many times, he now crisscrossed the United States for reunions with his former Navy shipmates and served as president of the West Point Reunion Committee.
He made many more trips by car, to see his son Gary and his family in northwestern Arkansas. A keen competitor all his life, Frank was an excellent bowler, a tennis player and a golfer who continued to enjoy the game well into his nineties. Like many in New Jersey, his idea of a perfect day was riding the breakers on Wildwood Beach, followed by a cocktail, dinner with his family and a stroll along the boardwalk.
In Frank’s case, that meant the families of all three brothers, along with assorted friends and in-laws. Frank was an active and much loved member of St. Paul’s Church in Rahway, serving on the vestry for many years and as assistant warden. When he was in his eighties, the congregation combined with Holy Comforter’s to form the Church of Good Shepherd, and Frank remained a popular figure with young and old, known for his quick wit, generous spirit and willingness to join the children in play.
Bob Dylan has celebrated the pleasures of remaining “forever young”. Frank Beck lived those joys for more than nine decades. Even in his final illness, he was capable of rollicking good humor: the nurses who checked on him sometimes found themselves doubled over with laughter.
From his hospital bed, Frank summed up his wide experience of people and places by saying, “We worked hard, but we had a good life”. So have those lucky enough to share it with him. Frank is survived by his wife Gloria and his sons; his grandchildren, Kirsten, Justin, Brittany, Zachary, Marina and Dylan; and his great-grandchildren, Kristopher and Charles.
Friends and families are invited to a memorial gathering at the Pettit-Davis Funeral Home at 371 West Milton Avenue in Rahway on Monday, March 4, from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm. There will be a service at the Church of the Good Shepherd on Tuesday, March 5, at 11:00 am. The family would welcome flowers or donations to the Church of the Good Shepherd, 739 Seminary Avenue, Rahway NJ 07065.
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