Arizona Sun

President
Nominates Beck
Recorder of Deeds

Washington, D. C. (NNPA)

President Truman last Wednesday, nominated Earl Wayne Beck of Kansas City, Missouri, to be Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia.

Mr. Beck will succeed the Rev. Marshall L. Shepard, of Philadelphia, who resigned to run for Recorder of Deeds of his home city.

The Beck appointment was, more or less, a personal selection of Mr. Truman's. While Mr. Truman was chief judge of Jackson County, Missouri, the county court appointed Mr. Beck as superintendent of the Jackson County home for delinquent and neglected boys and, as such, Mr. Beck was under Mr. Truman's supervision.

Mr. Beck was in the city last week and talked with members of the White House secretaries and with officials at Democratic National Committee headquarters. He also talked with Representative William L. Dawson, of Illinois, a vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Beck was born in Ottawa, Kansas, and received his early education in Kansas schools. While he was superintendent of the Jackson County boys' home, he studied physical education at the University of Michigan.

Before moving to Kansas City, Mr. Beck was in partnership in the grocery business in Topeka, Kansas. Later he served as boys' physical director at the YMCA in Kansas City, and then became the superintendent of the Jackson County boys' home. He held this position about fifteen years.

While serving in that position he was given the nickname of "Major," a title which he has ever since carried.

During World War I he was engaged in YMCA camp work, and during World War II, he was engaged in similar work with the United Service Organization.

After the latter war he became superintendent of the Douglass Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, and remained in that position until about a year and a half ago when he went into semi-retirement.

Mr. Beck's first wife, the mother of his three daughters, died in 1949, and he remarried at Christmas time last year. His wife is the former Mrs. Louise Whitlock, the widow of a Kansas City minister.

His three daughters are Mrs. Fern Webster of Kansas City, a teacher; Mrs. Marianna Sewell, the wife of Wilbur W. Sewell, an attorney of Washington, and Miss Marjorie Beck, who makes her home here with her brother-in-law and sister.