Bio

Frankie Beckman

Mississippi Gulf Coast Junior College (1965-1967) / Football
Moss Point, Mississippi

An outstanding football career at Gulf Coast almost did not happen for Frank Beckman. After coming to the Perkinston Campus in 1965, Beckman said he had a terrible first semester in the classroom. “I made four F’s and a D,” he says. “We moved to Moss Point from Meridian High School. My dad worked at Ingalls. When I got to Perk, I didn’t have any study skills at all. I made it through high school by simply paying attention in class.”

He says he was about to quit, but not before talking with football coach Harold Wesson. “I was there on a half football scholarship,” he says. “After my bad grades, they were about to get rid of my scholarship, so I quit. I packed my stuff and headed out the door when Coach Wesson stopped me and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was leaving because of my grades, and he asked me if I would stay if I had a full scholarship. I went home for about a day, then for whatever reason, I decided to come back. If he hadn’t stopped me that day and told me that, I probably wouldn’t have gone back.”

Beckman did go back to the Perkinston Campus and embarked on a stellar athletic career playing football. He was a two-way starter on the 1966 state championship football team coached by George Sekul. That squad was the first win a state title since 1948, and also beat archrival Pearl River for the first time in 18 years. “It was a great experience,” he says. “Coach Wesson was a good coach, but in 1966, it all came together. We beat Pearl River, and that next Monday they let us have a school holiday. It was a huge deal.”

Beckman, who played tackle on offense and defense, also earned Junior College Gridwire First-Team All-American in 1966. As fate would have it, some of Beckman’s All-American teammates that year were O.J. Simpson and former NFL defense lineman Fred Dryer. “During the first few games, I was primarily on defense. Then around the third game or so, Coach Sekul asked if I wanted to play both ways, and I said, ‘Sure.’ I think I was the only person on that team who was a starter on both sides of the ball.”

After Perk, he played football at Delta State and then coached high school football in Mississippi for eight years. But coaching wasn’t paying the bills, and Beckman needed a good job. So in 1986, he left Mississippi with “$400 in my pocket and three kids“ and headed west. “I moved to Texas without a job, but I found one at Bell Helicopter working in the stockroom. I had done some of that while working in Lexington, Miss. After six weeks, they asked me if I wanted to move up into supervision.”

Beckman did that for nine years and eventually moved into management. He is now the manager of production control at Bell’s new Product and Development Center. He says none of that would have happened if he hadn’t returned to Perk after quitting in 1965. “I wouldn’t have been able to move up at Bell so quickly without an education. I came from a background where education was not that important. I was the first person from my family to go to college, so playing football was the way for me to go to college.”