The Nashville community - and our larger world, too - has lost a lot with the sudden passing of state Rep. Bill Beck over the weekend.
Many comments lovely and true have been said about him in the few hours that have passed since his death (read some of them here), but in my view much more than this needs to be said about this sunny spirit of a man.
Bill Beck was certainly a modern man, but in his practice as a public servant he was a politician in Tennessee’s oldest tradition.
He could be a jovial glad-hander, true enough, and he was a steady presence at the places where politicos gather and do some of their public work - the fish fries, the bean suppers, the community gatherings - because this was part of his innate belief system. But his serious side also earnestly believed in the role of government and the necessity of working with colleagues “across the aisle” - as we call it nowadays with a touch of nostalgia.
In his official duties as State Representative from Davidson County, Bill knew well and spoke for the part of the county where I grew up - Inglewood, Madison, Rosebank, etc. That territory on the Eastside was in his soul and gave him an important orientation on whatever he did and heard downtown at the state Capitol. My friend Matt Anderson tweeted overnight that Bill “was a skilled legislator, a generous spirit and had a love for people you can’t fake.”
That’s high praise, and many of us in Nashville this morning would concur. There are plenty enough other folks in our public arena of whom that cannot truthfully be said, in the government roles at the state Capitol and Congress. There are plenty of frauds at our Capitol and enough power-drunk bad actors, thank you, and whom Representative Beck was skilled at either ignoring or talking back to, as the day required.
Along the way, Bill made us appreciate the importance of elections, the requirement that we participate in them, and the need to make good choices in the voting booth.
He leaves a profound void at his desk in the House chamber. And he has left us at a time when we have come to appreciate, more than ever, the need to choose representatives who have wisdom and joyful humor and an eagerness to do right by his constituents - not simply join in the foolish pandering of others who only hold highest the confused wrong values for humanity.
That is Bill’s legacy.
Bill Beck was a gentleman politician who really cared about his constituents and was able to so mostly with Good Humor! Yet another wonderful man gone so soon. Real Prayers for his Family, Friends and Constituents. 🙏🏻💔
I appreciated first hand his commitment to constituent service, and was thankful for it.