Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Beckman joined the U.S. Navy during World War II.
He served as an electrician aboard the hospital ship USS Comfort, and survived a 1945 kamikaze attack that killed 30 and wounded 48.
[1] After the war, he returned to St. Louis where he worked as a firefighter for 18 years until he was injured while fighting a fire.
In 1948, Beckman was playing for De Andries in the St. Louis Major League when he was selected for the U.S. soccer team that competed at the Summer Olympics.
This biographical article related to an American soccer forward is a stub.