About Roy
Background
I got my first kicks on Route 66 soon after I stopped kicking in utero. From the hospital in Springfield, Missouri, I was driven down Route 66 about 20 miles east to my home on the highway just inside the “city” limits of Marshfield, an Ozarks town of around 2,000 at the time. I apparently made my first attempt to see the USA without a Chevrolet at around age two. My Mother says she was mortified to answer a knock at the front door and to be scolded by one of the town grocers for not properly keeping track of her first-born — whom he was holding. The grocer said he had to abruptly stop his car on his way out of town because, in front of our residence, he found me walking down the middle of Route 66!
Every night for 18 years, I lay in bed hearing the whistles, the rumble and the clatter of freight trains headed to points unknown. By day, particularly in the summer, I watched cars with license plates from every state gassing up — or broken down — at the two service stations across the road before they could resume their cross-country explorations. I could not wait for the day I would know the freedom of discovery on those seemingly unending open roads . . . and also the seemingly unending possibilities to satisfy my curiosity about the people, the topography, the flora, fauna and cultures of this vast country.
Some of the experiences of my life that are outside my career and mean a lot to me:
- Weighing 135 pounds in high school, I was an All-Conference offensive guard. (It was a football conference of small Ozarks schools, but, hey!) I had utterly failed at every other sport. Playing on the line was something I could finally find success without top talent but mainly through hard work, tenacity and grit. Learning how to be effective while being battered by much larger players for 60 minutes every Friday night, I felt like I learned a lot about an approach to much of the rest of life. (I was kind of famous one year for tackling a large returning All-Conference fullback on a below-freezing night and suffering eight breaks in my right leg.)
- On Christmas Day of 1971, people listening to the U.S. Armed Forces Radio across Europe heard an hour-long cantata entitled “The Prince of Light and Peace,” accompanied with guitars, bass and keyboard and performed by a choir of soldiers, their spouses and Italian civilians at the U.S. Army installation in Vicenza, Italy. That was my composition. And I was the director of that choir at the compound of the 559th U.S. Army Artillery Group of the Southern European Task Force. With Shirley’s help on harmonies and sheet music, I had composed the cantata on guitar when the order for that year’s Christmas sheet music turned out in October to have been lost. (Communicating, ordering, delivering were all much different in those days.)
Roy Beck, Author/Lecturer
Books
• The Case Against Immigration: The moral, economic, social, and environmental reasons for reducing U.S. immigration back to traditional levels (W.W. Norton & Co., April 1996, 287pp)
• Re-Charting America's Future: Responses to Arguments Against Stabilizing U.S. Population and Limiting Immigration (The Social Contract Press, 1994, 224pp)
• Prophets and Politics: Handbook on the Washington Offices of the U.S. Churches (Institute on Religion and Democracy, 1994, 204pp)
• On Thin Ice: A Religion Reporter's Memoir (Bristol Books, 1988, 234pp)
• A chapter, "Overwhelmed by Good Intentions," of Loyalty Misplaced: Misdirected Virtue and Social Disintegration (Edited by Gerald Frost, The Social Affairs Unit of Great Britain, February 1997, 125pp)
Video
• "Immigration by the Numbers," (The Social Contract Press, 1996, 18 min.)
Selected Speaking Engagements
• Commonwealth Club, San Francisco
• Smithsonian Institution's annual seminars for college deans
• Annual National Conference on Applied Ethics, California State University-Long Beach
• DACOR (association of retired diplomatic officers), Washington, D.C.
• Briefings of Senate and House Members and staffers
* Hoover Institution, Stanford University
• World Affairs Councils of San Francisco, Monterey and San Jose
• Sierra Club, Palm Beach, Fla.
• Numerous college lectures, environmental conferences, women's political groups, grassroots immigration activist organizations and business clubs
Magazines & Periodicals
• Atlantic Monthly, "The Ordeal of Immigration in Wausau," Apr. 1994. (Sixty Minutes, featured segment, Oct. 1994.)
• National Review, "Right of Silence: Republicans and Immigration," cover story, 1JUL94; "Republicans Against Reform," 8APR96, and other regular contributions.
• New York Times, "Unfettered Immigration Has Costs, Too: What Giuliani forgot to tell us," 11JAN97; "The Pro-Immigration Lobby," 30APR96.
• Washington Post, "The Wages of Immigration: Liberals Won't Face the Real Cost of Foreign Workers," 21APR96.
• Christian Science Monitor, "Democrats Should Back Lower Immigration," 25MAR96.
• Other recent publications include: New York Newsday, Los Angeles Times, Population & Environment Quarterly, San Diego Union, Christianity Today, Good News, Society of Environmental Journalists Journal.
Journalist
• Washington Editor, The Social Contract, a quarterly journal on inter-relationship of immigration, social cohesiveness, population, labor and environmental issues. (1991-present)
• Chief Washington Correspondent, Booth Newspapers, eight Michigan dailies (1987-90).
Associate Editor and traveling writer of national and international public affairs, the Dallas-based, national United Methodist Reporter (1980-87).
• Sunday business news editor, Cincinnati Enquirer (1978-80).
• Environmental reporter, columnist, investigative reporter, Grand Rapids (MI) Press (1969, 72-78).
• Reporter, Columbia Missourian (1969-70).
Education / Honors
• Bachelor of Journalism, University of Missouri School of Journalism (1970). Honors for news reporting and science writing; Kappa Tau Alpha academic journalism fraternity.
• U.S. Army Commendation Medal (1972).
• Environmental awards: Isaac Walton League of America's national Honor Roll Award for "outstanding journalism in the areas of conservation and preservation" (1976); U.S. environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Quality Award (1975); Tri-State Air Committee honors for writing about effects of Cincinnati-area's air quality effect on businesses (1979).
• Religion writing awards: "Communicator of the Year" given by the United Methodist Church in 1982; numerous national religion-writing awards for news, features, series, editorials and investigations (1981-87).
• Who's Who in the East.
Selected TV & Radio
• C-SPAN. Washington Journal and others.
• PBS. The Editors.
• National Syndicated TV. BIZ-NET, It's Your Business.
• CNBC. Geraldo Rivera.
• Numerous local broadcast news magazine interviews in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Phoenix, Miami, St. Louis and Tucson.
• New York City. WOR-AM, Bob Grant.
• Berkeley. KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, Audio Evidence
• Wisconsin Public Radio Network, Conversations with Jean Feraca.
• Boston. WBZ-AM, David Brudnow.
• San Diego. KOGO-AM. John Coleman Show.
• San Francisco. KGO-AM. Ron Owens
• Seattle. KVI, Mike Siegal Show
Personal
• Native of the Missouri Ozarks. Married since 1970 to Shirley, a pediatric physical therapist in private practice. Two sons.
• Habitat for Humanity: Leader of annual work weeks for high schoolers since 1990.
• Member of Mount Olivet United Methodist Church of Arlington; Sunday school teacher of 6th through 8th graders; chair of various commissions.