Talbot-Upson-Crawford County GaArchives Biographies.....Beck, Elizabeth October 25, 1891 - December 8, 1986 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: T. Bradford Willis http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00031.html#0007638 June 11, 2014, 11:56 am Source: Family Records Author: Virginia Greene and Hester M. Beck Willis Elizabeth Howell was born on October 25, 1891 on a farm near West. You are the oldest child of Joshua Calhoun Howell and Addie Smith Howell. You have two sisters and one brother living and your parent lost one little daughter in infancy. You had a childhood that was happy and normal, and attended elementary school in Hillsboro and West and you graduated from West High School in 1910. You went to Sam Houston Normal in Huntsville in 1910-1911. You finished your college work at Baylor University in 1938. Elizabeth Howell Beck, you taught first in Rogers Hill near West. Then you went out in west Texas and taught in Brownfield for one year. We hear you loved west Texas and the people. In fact, while you were there, you came down with a terrible cold, and some friends of yours there, the Tom Rogers, fixed you some cough medicine, that you can still feel burning in your throat, even when you discuss it today! Then you came back and taught in the West schools for several years. Then, oh then, love came into your live, in the person of a fine young man named Roy Elmer Beck. One morning, on your way to school in Elm Mott, the interurban stopped for you by a big puddle of water. You told this young conductor he could have missed the water, and by so doing you impressed him to such an extent, he was determined to meet this young school marm! Reverend W. H. Cole, who was a friend of the young man, and who happened also to be a friend of Elizabeth Howell, introduced them the following Sunday when young Mr. Beck came to the services there, purposely to meet our heroine! They kept steady company about a year, and were married in the church on December 23, 1919. On a cold, icy day in February, the first to be exact, in the year 1924, a lovely little daughter came to live. She was named Hester Mae Beck, and you thought with joy in your heart, You began teaching in the Waco Public school system in 1930, and that year, your little daughter started to school! The first year, you taught in a Sunday school room of the North Waco Baptist Church. In August of 1944, you had your sorrow, as life brings into lives of all of God's children. Your husband passed from this earthly life to haven of rest that our Lord had prepared for him. It was soon after Mr. Beck's death, you were asked to teach the Dorcas Class, and we all know your life from that time to our present day. You are a former member of the choir, and have been very active in the Woman's Society of Christian Service. Hester remembers when you used to go to church and stay and clean it up after services were over! You have always been known for your generosity, but your daughter told me of one little incident that she would never forget. You had a pair of ruby beads, and Mrs. Osborne, a former member of this church, always admired them. One day you just took them off and gave them to her. Hester says she will always remember this, as it typifies Mother to me in so many ways! Just for little odds and ends we picked up, we learned your secret ambition, was to have been a doctor! Also that you drink iced tea for breakfast, the year around! And one summer in Galveston, you were wading in the beach with Hester and a crab grabbed your toe. You calmly announced that that was what you got for going in swimming on Sunday! We could not stop at this page, without saying, you are a proud and loving grandmother of two fine little boys, Brad and David Willis, who think as do we of the Dorcas Class, that our Elizabeth Howell Beck, is just out of the ordinary, and we thank our Father in Heaven for her guidance, and love of Christian fellowship that she generated in our lives. That is why we have such a wonderful class each Sunday. We have to come for her to charge the batteries of our Christian hearts. Virginia Greene August 27, 1956 Additional Comments: This biographical sketch was given on August 27, 1956 to the Dorcas Class of the Herring Avenue Methodist Church of Waco, TX. Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/talbot/photos/bios/beck429bs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/talbot/bios/beck429bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/gafiles/ File size: 5.0 Kb