Posted on 09/26/2009 12:49:13 PM PDT by llevrok
Firebrand Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck returns to his Northwest roots today, scheduled to speak and sign books at Seattle’s Safeco Field and, later, to receive the proverbial key to the city of his former hometown of Mount Vernon.
Amid protests, petitions and threats of shopping boycotts, the mayor of the Skagit County city best known for its tulips has proclaimed the day as “Glenn Beck Day,” igniting a firestorm against the conservative television and radio commentator known for his plain-spoken, sometimes inflammatory views.
Beck, whose meteoric rise in American pop culture in recent months has landed him on the cover of Time magazine and Forbes’ list of richest celebrities, and won him legions of fans and foes alike, lived most of his childhood in the town of about 30,000 roughly an hour’s drive north of Seattle.
His father operated a bakery in old downtown, and Beck attended a private Catholic school through the eighth grade. At 13, Beck won a contest that landed him his first broadcast gig as a deejay for a local radio station.
But one of the defining moments in Beck’s early life in Washington – an event still shrouded in mystery – occurred in the waters of South Puget Sound three decades ago.
On May 15, 1979, boaters found the body of Beck’s 41-year-old divorcée mother, Mary, floating about two miles north of the Asarco smelter at Ruston (near Tacoma)
A day later, the body of the man who reportedly had taken Beck’s mother fishing was found washed ashore near Vashon Island’s Tahlequah Ferry Dock. The man’s small boat also was found beached at Maury Island, with a small dog, personal items and an empty bottle of booze inside.
Years later, during his radio and television broadcasts and in interviews, Beck consistently has described his mother’s death as a suicide, part of a running thread in the fabric of his personal story of salvation – the hallmark of his broadcasts. Beck’s stepbrother also killed himself, Beck has said.
“My mom wasn’t mother of the year,” Beck told his audience last year. “My mother, my mother had real deep, deep problems. She was doing her best, but she left the family to deal with suicide when I was 13 years old.”
Beck has said that, like his mother, he has battled chemical addiction and nearly killed himself, too – until finding redemption through, among other things, Alcoholics Anonymous and Mormonism.
But a recent report in Salon Magazine questioned Beck’s version of his mother’s death, stirring anger among Beck’s followers.
Now, news accounts from the time, interviews and official records obtained by The News Tribune largely describe the death of Mary Beck as an accident.
“It was determined that (Mary Beck) appeared to be a classic drowning victim,” a Tacoma police report on her death investigation states.
“There were no obvious injuries on the exterior of the body and at this point there is no reason to believe that this was anything other than an accidental drowning.”
Yet the report added that Coast Guard officials theorized Beck’s mother also could have jumped overboard.
Beck, who has talked generally about his mother’s death on the air and in interviews but has provided few details, this week declined The News Tribune’s request for an interview.
WATERY MYSTERY
Though Mary Beck’s son has plainly called it a suicide, her death unfolds more as a mystery in interviews and records.
“Who could know the details? Who could know?” asked Don Carroll, a City of Tacoma employee and nephew of Orean Carroll, the man who drowned with Mary Beck after launching from Point Defiance 30 years ago.
“Nobody knows,” he added. “I think there’s just a lot of speculation.”
After divorcing Glenn’s father in 1977, Mary Beck moved to Sumner to live with her sister, family friends say. For a time, Glenn had lived with his mother, briefly attending school in Puyallup. After his mother died, he moved to his father’s home in Bellingham, where Beck finished high school.
When Beck’s mother did not return home, her sister contacted authorities.
Orean Carroll, 56, a widower and retired paper maker for the Fibreboard Corp., and Mary Beck left early on a Tuesday from Beck’s residence, according to a story in The News Tribune at the time. A Tacoma police report noted the venture as a fishing trip.
After Mary Beck was found that afternoon, a family friend identified her body at the Pierce County morgue, a police report says. With her, she brought Glenn, then 15, and an older sister, then 17.
Beck told the St. Petersburg Times in 2000 that the tragedy made him grow up fast.
“I became an adult the day she died,” Beck is quoted as saying in the story.
From the morgue, authorities called Beck’s father in Bellingham, who arrived later to take custody of both teens, the report said. Family members of Carroll, who remained missing, also were contacted.
The next morning, King County police found Carroll’s unoccupied 24-foot tolly craft beached at Piner’s Point on Maury Island. Inside, officers found “a small brown daschund belonging to Mrs. Beck,” a police report says. They also recovered pants and other clothes belonging to both victims, as well as Carroll’s wallet and Mary Beck’s purse, both containing their driver’s licenses.
Officers “found nothing nothing unusual” the report added, but “did note an empty pint of Gordon’s vodka.”
Later that afternoon, Carroll’s body was found about 100 yards east of the Vashon ferry dock.
Don Carroll said he knows few details about what happened. Both his father and another uncle who likely knew more have since passed away, he added.
Among the different scenarios Don Carroll recalls hearing was that someone jumped in the water, and then the other passenger followed.
“That could mean they jumped in to go swimming,” he added.
“I’m not saying that I know that it definitely happened one way or the other,” Don Carroll said. “It was a terrible accident, as far as our family is concerned – or as far as I’m concerned.”
A Tacoma police narrative noted that the boaters who found Mary Beck’s body said she’d been dressed in a light blue long-sleeved shirt and “black cut-offs or the bottom part of a two piece swim suit” that apparently were lost as they towed the body to shore.
According to the Salon story, Beck has said in at least one interview that his mother left a brief suicide note the morning of her death. Beck’s father did not return a call seeking comment for this story.
Beck’s family did not discuss his mother’s death, and neither did he – until years later, when he broached the subject live on the air, according to the St. Petersburg Times profile. His current wife first heard Beck describe his mother’s death as a suicide while listening to the broadcast, the story said.
Washington state death certificates show the cause of both deaths as drowning, with Carroll’s death ruled an accident and Mary Beck’s as “probable accidental.”
Although most of the Tacoma police investigation report also describes the deaths as accidental, it offered one other possible explanation:
“Coast Guardsman theorize that Mrs. Beck, who had a history of heart problems and also was thought to be having a nervous breakdown, might have fallen overboard or jumped overboard,” the report says, adding that “Carroll attempted to save her and the result being both victims drowning.”
At the time of the drownings, Virgle Hockman, then a Tacoma police lieutenant, described the incident to The News Tribune as a man-overboard and failed rescue.
Reached Friday, Hockman, now a retired assistant police chief, said he has no recollection of the case.
“I flat don’t remember that one,” Hockman said. “But I think (the media are) bordering on idiocy digging up something in the ancient past like that.”
WHY NOW?
Angry Web site commenters to stories questioning a three-decades-old tragedy largely blame the liberal media for a warped smear campaign.
“It seems strange that an event that occurred when GB was 15 or 20 is a noteworthy news story now that he is a celebrated radio personality,” one commenter wrote this week.
Thousands are expected at Safeco Field today to hear Beck speak and to sign copies of his new book, “Arguing with Idiots.” Beck is then scheduled to head north to Mount Vernon for the private, sold-out Glenn Beck Day event at Skagit Valley College.
Expected to greet him for his return home are throngs of protesters. One group presented more than 16,000 signatures to town officials this week on a petition seeking to stop the event for “the race-bating Fox commentator.” Among his most controversial remarks was calling President Barack Obama “a racist.”
But those who knew Glenn Beck, the boy, from his days in a small working-class town, recall him in terms hardly recognizable by today’s rhetoric. Well-meaning, polite, ambitious. A kid who liked music and doing magic tricks from a well-liked family.
Bud Norris, the town mayor who has become the center of criticism for organizing the event, said this week that he never expected how controversial it would become.
“Years ago, when I ran for county commissioner, he volunteered to walk up and down First Street for me wearing a sandwich board,” Norris said. “I haven’t been in contact with him for 30 years now, but he was sure an outgoing kid then.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lewis Kamb, The News Tribune reporter of this story, grew up in Mount Vernon. Members of Kamb’s family socialized with Beck and his family members, but they have largely fallen out of contact for more than two decades. Prior to working for The News Tribune, Kamb provided on a freelance basis some research material and contact information to the writer of a recent Salon Magazine report on Beck described in this story. Kamb was not involved in the writing of the Salon story.
It’s like all the intense interest in Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mom. It’s purpose is to use up column-inches and news minutes, so that people don’t notice how little we know about Obama’s past.
Playing naive arm-chair shrink, I wouldn’t be suprised that no matter
what the Cause of Death was on her death certificate, Beck could be
forgiven for considering it suicide, even if in slow motion.
As in, she was mentally unstable, not getting the help she needed,
and compounding problems with self-medication. And that sooner or
later, death was a likely outcome from this constellation of problems.
Of course, if Beck was an American-hating, bomb-throwing leftist
like Bill Ayers, the journalists would have concocted such a rationalization
if Bill Ayers mom had died under the same scenario as Beck’s mom.
I really don’t understand what they’re trying to say about this “mystery”. His mother drowned, and his family seems to believe it was suicide. So what? If it was indeed only an accident... what does that change? They seem to be trying to allege that Beck has been wrong about how his mother died. Do they think this affects his credibility somehow? Why would it?
It jus’ don’ make no sense.
That's all that matters to me.
My thoughts exactly...what a story for Beck.
Doing well after such a life!
I am glad he is on our side!!
It’s like aliens dropped him off one night, naked, with a pack of Chicklets.
Local boy makes good. Glenn Beck’s new fame and spirit is the freshest thing to come down the pike in 2009.
Great. It’s easier for the state run media to dig into the distant past to question the circumstances of Beck’s mother’s death than it is to examine the veracity of his claims regarding President Obama’s radical agenda for dismantling our country.
What’s this:
“But those who knew Glenn Beck, the boy, from his days in a small working-class town, recall him in terms hardly recognizable by today’s rhetoric. Well-meaning, polite, ambitious. A kid who liked music and doing magic tricks from a well-liked family.”
Ambitious and well-meaning seem pretty obvious to me. Polite isn’t surprising either. That he liked music fit with his having come up as a radio dj, and that he liked doing magic tricks fits with the showman that he is. Sheesh!
You are right. Glenn would know more about his mom than these leftards. I pray they do not touch his heart because they are going to be really mean to him and his family - if they can get a bite of them.
There are those will now tell us "It doesn't work that way" but it does and that's how Obama got ahead.
This must be proof Beck is (a) on the right track, and (b) very effective.
If the State Run Media is resorting to this, Beck is truly kicking their ass.
bump
Cause he’s gone after ACORN, OBAMA, the Hideous RATHKE BROS., and all the other CORRUPT DEMS! They will stop at nothing to destroy him.
Aww hell, I bet half the people I attended High School with wouldnt remember me.
Whats the big deal? Glan has done more damage to the left, at great personal risk, than any other broadcaster. The left wants him gone, wiped out, ruined. Thats the way the left operates: destruction of all people who oppose them. Like a swarm of locusts, they will attack every part of someones life, and blow out of portion the smallest of items.
Keep it up, Glenn. You are doing most of the heavy lifting.
That does it! I will never watch Beck again.
For the record on 9/13/09 there was not one mention in the Tacoma News Tribune about the march in DC.
I know because my wife subscribes, so I looked out of curiousity. I normally wouldn’t.
Hey, Lewis, where’s the birth certificate ? How ‘bout you do an article digging up that one, Columbo ?
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