Early Years
"Beckey," as he is known to his climbing companions, was born near Cologne, Germany, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was three, ending up in Seattle, Washington. He started climbing in the North Cascades as a teenager, learning the basic concepts from The Mountaineers but quickly going on to harder climbs.
He attended the University of Washington and received a degree in business administration. He worked as a delivery truck driver, which left him time for climbing.
Unlike Jim Whittaker, a fellow Seattleite and the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest in 1963, Beckey shied away from the large team efforts, preferring smaller alpine-style undertakings. Beckey seemed a likely choice as a member for the large, 1963 American Everest Expedition, but he was not chosen, even though he had been to Lhotse in 1955 with the International Himalayan Expedition.
Read more about this topic: Fred Beckey
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Love, that is all I asked, a little love, daily, twice daily, fifty years of twice daily love like a Paris horse-butcher’s regular, what normal woman wants affection?”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)