Word: brewster
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Seattle postman's son, "Handsome Frank" Brewster began driving a team of horses at 16, joined the Teamsters, spent two years in the Army during and after World War I, and returned to Seattle to become recording secretary of the Teamsters' Local 174 in 1921. His salary: $2 a month. During those early years, he was senior to and far overshadowed a turnip-shaped young Seattle Teamster named Dave Beck. "Frank had the interests of the working stiff at heart," recalls a Teamster veteran. "He'd put his neck on the line any time to sign...
...Tough?" Dave Beck issued directives, made statements, planned strategy, and, without suffering a single bruise on his pudgy body, became chairman of the Teamsters' Western Conference. Frank Brewster was his enforcer - and he was a good one. Arrested three times for picket-line brawling, Brewster once landed his mighty right hand on a policeman. Another cop remembers what happened after Brewster was taken to headquarters: "We stopped the elevator between the first and second floors and we worked him over. I've never seen a guy get such a beating. Finally he slumped down on his knees...
...Frank Brewster wanted to be more than a goon. He learned that the well-dressed man does not wear purple shirts and scarlet neckties. He prettied up his language to the point where it would no longer shock a waterfront madam, and he worked for an air of well-dressed urbanity. He became a tab-grabbing customer at Vic Rosellini's in Seattle and Del Vecchio's in San Francisco. His third wife (he has been divorced by all three) had a certain standing in San Francisco society. He was admitted to Seattle's semi-stylish Washington...
...Ignore." In 1953 Dave Beck was named president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and Frank Brewster took his place at the head of the Western Conference. His duties kept him traveling, and so did his horses; he therefore sold his Seattle home and began living in hotel rooms. Under Brewster, the West Coast Teamsters have given heavily to charity, sponsored a classical-music program on television, with Seattle Symphony Conductor Milton Katims presiding...
...Frank Brewster's past remained an embarrassment. When, as befits an ambitious labor statesman, a biography was being written about President Dave Beck, the authors had a problem: how to deal with the part Brewster had played in Beck's life. They suggested to Beck that Brewster could be handled in one of three ways: 1) he could be played up as a picket-line hero, 2) he could be treated as a roughneck problem child, 3) he could be ignored. Beck sat thinking for a long while, finally moved his soft hands across the table and made...