Beckman was born in Oakland, California in 1879, one of the three children of Charles C. and Angelina (or Angeline) (née Stetson) Wheeler.
[1] She married John W. Beckman, an electrochemical engineer who worked in Niagara Falls, New York for the American Cyanamid Company.
As a result of this conversation, and later advice from Beckman, he started on a path that took him to study chemistry at University of California, Berkeley and then remain in academic science.
[3] They met at a Christmas party when he was a university student and she persuaded him to take a music course, a subject in which he had already shown aptitude, rather than be focused on professional sports.
She also encouraged him to meet the lute-player Sven Scholander by travelling to Sweden, which turned out to be important in Dyer-Bennet's development as a singer.