Timothy R. Beck

Tim lived with Fabaso — a word of his invention. If life did not conform to his expectations, he invented a new word. Hence: Fabaso, which means energy, vitality, living fully — doing what you want without hesitation or shame. It is how Tim always lived his life.

Tim burst onto the scene in Chicago, on July 31, 1949. He was the first son of Ray and Marilyn Beck (née Radford), and older brother to Nancy Stuart (née Beck), who thought the world of him, as her protector and inspiration, and the one who could be relied on to “convince Dad to buy me that car.”

Even as a young boy, Tim expressed a bountiful love for others. He was a patrol boy in elementary school and made sure to have a popsicle stick on hand at all times. One of his classmates had periodic seizures, and Tim was ready to help.

Tim graduated high school in 1967, after four years of daring exploits with his friend and partner-in-crime, Mike Norris, colorfully recounted in his yearbook. Highlights include driving a friend’s car out onto the Lake Michigan beach (they “didn’t even get busted”) and the “big snow” of 1967, where they stayed up all night before going to school the next day feeling “terrible beyond description.”

Finishing High School in the “summer of love,” Tim embodied the ethos of his era. He loved — fully and completely — not just his family (which he adored), but his friends and acquaintances, too. He possessed the special ability to make you feel important. He was always there for everybody, day or night, at any hour. You knew you could rely on him and that he would come through for you when you needed him most.

He was an adventurer, an entrepreneur, a hunter and fisher, a friend, a leader, a pillar of his community, an outdoorsman, a traveler, surfer, storyteller, bon vivant, and philosopher. He was the most interesting man that his friends had ever met. And he was never short of friends! Wherever he went, he had a crowd around him in minutes. He could not walk into a room without leaving an impression.

He was a gifted story-teller and loved to embellish. He had the President on speed-dial; he palled around with J.D. Salinger; he was a secret agent of the United States (his children never fully believed his stories, but they did wonder when they would find him in the backyard throwing knives at a target with deadly accuracy).

Tim went to college at Northern Illinois and then transferred to Drake University in Fort Lauderdale, gaining a degree in Business and Real Estate. He then took graduate studies in Comparative Religion at Syracuse University. After college, Tim was the youngest licensed Real Estate Broker in the state of Illinois. A natural entrepreneur, he worked in the family brick business, expanding the company to include fireplaces and tile; he worked at a fish market, a wine and liquor store; he started a company selling high-end lighting and housing fixtures. Tim understood the secret of good business. The product did not matter, only the people mattered. He could identify people’s talents — where they would be happy; where they would succeed. 

He knew how to talk to people — any person, no matter how quickly they would pass through his life. He remembered all the details and kept a journal where he would write down everything he learned about everyone. He could make you feel special, and he had that amazing charisma that would make you feel as though you were the most important person in the room.

Tim was never afraid to pursue his dreams. In 1983, fulfilling a life-long goal to live at sea, he purchased a sailboat and spent five years sailing through the Bahamas and the Caribbean. He met his best man and life-long friend, John Howe. The two were like brothers (and John named his only son Tim in his honor). They loved to poke fun at each other. When they used to go diving together, they had a series of hand signals for communicating under the water. One time, John signaled to Tim that there was a lobster by a coral reef. But when Tim went to take a shot, the reef moved — it was an enormous moray eel! Tim turned to find John, but he was already halfway to the surface, no doubt laughing through his scuba mask.

In Chicago, Tim found the love of his life, Mary. They met at a first-aid course. Tim was getting advanced first aid for his sailing, and Mary was training to be on ski patrol. They were paired off to practice their bandaging, and both agreed to apply the ankle bandages for two completely different reasons! Mary wanted to avoid bandaging her legs because she hadn’t shaved, and Tim wanted to avoid bandaging his feet because he had a hole in his sock. They met in the middle, as would so often define their marriage, and bandaged each others’ ankles.

Somehow, Tim convinced Mary to join him in his life of adventure and fun. They were married in 1986 and spent a year-long honeymoon living at sea in the Bahamas. Tim was always overflowing with love, and no one on the planet received it more than Mary. The two were inseparable for thirty-five years of marriage. Wherever Tim went, Mary followed, both of them laughing all the way, turning every moment into an adventure. While living on the boat, Mary’s hat fell into the water, and Tim decided it would be an excellent time to practice their “man-overboard” drill (to rescue the hat, of course). He loved to turn everything into a game, into fun.

On their wedding day, Tim said to Mary, “I can’t promise that things will always be easy, but I can promise they will always be exciting.”

They returned to land to start a family and soon moved back to Chicago where Tim returned to the family business. In 1995, the family moved full-time to their summer home in Apple Canyon Lake. In that small-town community, Tim’s natural leadership skills blossomed. He knew how to identify problems and how to fix them. But he never solved problems alone. He knew how to get the family, the team, the community together to tackle the problem. He identified a safety issue in the local high school and embarked on a campaign to renovate the school, uniting the community in a common goal.

He served as President of the School Board, President of the Lions Club and Pheasants Forever; coached little league baseball and youth soccer. He was an active volunteer in his community, teaching gifted students at the elementary school.

Tim was always a leader — the kind of leader that people naturally followed. He was competitive but knew how to make competition fun. The family was always a force to be reckoned with at the local trivia, with Tim at the helm. He was a four-time winner of the local chili cook-off, winning his fourth trophy by buying drinks for the entire voting bloc at the local bar. He loved to hunt in the countryside, often with his friend, Woody, and the two of them had a mantra to live by: “don’t let life get in the way of your fun” (or, maybe it was “don’t let your job get in the way of your drinking”).

He was a Chicago die-hard his whole life. He loved the Bears, the Blackhawks, the Cubs. Like most Chicagoans, he cried watching his beloved Cubbies win the World Series in 2016. He took his children to Wrigley Field and the United Center. He taught them how to ice skate (shoveling a makeshift rink on the lake every winter); he played catch with them all summer.

Sick of the winter and longing to return to the sea, Tim and his family moved back to Florida in 2004. He bought his dream boat, a 42-foot Albermarle sport fishing-boat, and spent his days on the glittering waters of the Intracoastal and the Atlantic Ocean. Never the type to fully retire, he worked as a bridge supervisor for the state of Florida. It was the perfect job for him — paid to be on the water, watching the boats come and go.

His life, always full of surprises, took another turn in 2018 when he was diagnosed with leukemia. Tim never wanted the day to end. After the rest of the family went to bed, he would stay up late into the evening to ensure that everyone slept well. His children could always count on him if they woke up from a nightmare or needed to talk.

When he received his leukemia diagnosis, he wasn’t ready for the day-of-his-life to end either. The doctors gave him six months to live, and he transformed that time into three years, living long enough to meet his grandchildren.

An adventurer through-and-through, Tim loved to surf. He always said that life is an experience — a big wave to ride, and he approached death in the same way. Not as an ending but as a transition. A new adventure, exciting in its mystery. Tim loved the ocean, and in its constant motion, he saw the secret to living a good life, the key to his restless energy. For behind every wave, you could always count on another. Life was not a precious thing handed to you. It was a force of nature to be captured. Like the surfer, life invited him to paddle away from the safety of the shore, battle the waves, and position himself for the big moment. Then he caught the wave. And it was on that surge of energy, the wave carrying him to shore, that he knew he was alive. When the wave subsided, all he wanted to do was paddle past the break to catch the next one.

Tim rode the waves all his life, and in the end, he came to shore in the comfort of his home, surrounded by his family, on January 19, 2021. He is preceded in death by his parents, Ray and Marilyn Beck (née Radford), and his first daughter, Keely Beck (to whom he named his boat, Keely II). He is survived by his wife, Mary Beck (née Murphy), his sister, Nancy Stuart (née Beck), his five children: Christopher Beck, Thomas Beck, Robert Beck, Michael Beck, and Molly Beck; his daughters-in-law, Elizabeth Beck (née Philbin) and Jill Beck (née Lindsey), and his two grandchildren: Theodore Beck and Laurel Beck.

As a lover of all religions, Tim never thought of death as a sad moment. He believed, without doubt, in a world beyond this one. He knew, too, that death gave life its sweetness. That adventure could not live without a little danger. 

Instead of flowers, excessive condolences, or any of the usual funereal trappings (his words), he would ask you instead to live with Fabaso. Live fully and without shame. Dare greatly and strive for what you want. Give far more than you receive, always. Love everyone around you, even and especially when it feels difficult. Do what you love every day and design your life around your love. Treat life as an adventure and not a duty. Laugh hard, laugh often, and laugh, especially at yourself. 

Treat the difficulties of life as you would a wave. Don’t fight it. Catch it and enjoy the ride, wherever it takes you. And always remember his words of wisdom: “we’re just trying to have fun, goddamnit.”