Collector of Michigan lumberjack songs. Nebraska-born Beck began studying Michigan lumberjacks in the 1930s. He collected their songs, stories, and dances through the 1940s, urging the seventy- and eighty-year-old former lumber workers to let him collect and publish the material before it disappeared. Beck taught English and folklore at Central Michigan University, where he also chaired the English department. In addition to his passion for teaching, Beck’s love was collecting songs in the woods. He once described his fieldwork as “high adventure,” adding that “it has given me unforgettable experiences, vigorous days in the out of doors, and some most interesting friends.” He compiled various portions of the collection in three books, Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks (1942), Lore of the Lumbercamp (1948), and they Knew Paul Bunyan (1956), all published by the University of Michigan Press. Beck was as much a promoter and educator as he was a field collector. Not content simply to write books, he pursued numerous opportunities to present his informants and their traditions to public audiences. The group he helped form—The Michigan Lumberjacks—first performed at the 1934 National Folk Festival in St. Louis. Beck acted as their manager and toured with the Lumberjacks around the state and nation over the next twenty years, appearing at trade shows and school assemblies and even on national radio broadcasts. In 1959, when the Library of Congress produced the recording Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks, Beck edited the liner notes. Beck was a founding member of the Michigan Folklore Society, president of the Michigan Education Association, and vice president of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters. After retiring from Central Michigan University in 1958, he traveled extensively, occasionally performing lumberjack-song programs. He published a book of memoirs—It Was This Way—in 1963. In 1989, he was posthumously awarded a Michigan Heritage Award. LuAnne Gaykowski Kozma