Douglas John Beck
My wife and I first met David and his family just after we were married and they were our next-door neighbors (both in our first houses) in Silver Spring, Maryland. David and Shelly kindly invited us over for dinner one night. Before we went, my wife Connie warned me that David was a passionate Ohio State fan, and given that I had gone to Michigan, I knew that I had to tread carefully on that delicate topic if it came up. David apparently did not know about my undergraduate ties and during dinner calmy asked me “so where did you go to school?”. I somewhat nervously answered “that school up north”, the phrase that the OSU football legend Woody Hayes used because he could not bear to say the name Michigan. Upon hearing my answer, David slowly sunk his head, thought for a few seconds, looked up and said, “well it could be worse—you could have gone to Notre Dame”. With the ice broken by his ever-keen wit and his wife Shelly’s graciousness, we began what became a nearly 40-year friendship between the Becks and the entire Orr family.
While we frequently visited at each other’s homes, especially during holiday events, birthdays and anniversaries, it took David and me probably more than a decade of avoiding each other during the annual rivalry before we decided that as adults it would be fun to attend the Michigan-Ohio State game each year in each other’s stadium. In Columbus, we would stay with David’s close friends Susan Dirr and her husband David, and in Ann Arbor with my brother and his family. For well more than a decade, David and I looked forward to those memorable annual trips, which helped bond a friendship of many dimensions beyond football. Football was certainly a passion of his, but over the years we visited many times at each other’s homes in Maryland and in Rehoboth, talking about family, our work, and life in general. Although this last decade brought David daunting and totally unfair health challenges, he never lost his wonderful wit, positive attitude and love of family. I always looked forward to our weekly calls during his final years.
Rest in peace my friend.
Doug Beck