How I Met Basse Beck

AuthorFranklin L. Kury
Pages3-9
3
Chapter 1: How I Met Basse Beck
In early 1965, my secretar y announced that Basse Beck was in my law
oce and wanted to talk with me. She did not say what he wanted to
discuss.
My wife Elizabeth, who is a lso a lawyer, and I had just begun our law
practice as Kury a nd Kury a little more than a yea r earlier. I was eager to
obtai n client s.
Beck was a surprise. I had never met hi m but knew who he was: a co-owner
of the Sunbury Daily Item, the largest newspaper in mid-state Pennsylvania,
and owner of WKOK, the largest radio stat ion in mid-state Pennsylvania.
But his visit had nothing to do with his business interests. H is real passion in
life was the Susquehanna R iver. He wanted to stop the coal mine drai nage
pollution that aicted the river from time to time and to restore the ru ns of
migratory shad that were blocked by the Conowingo and other dams on the
lower Susquehanna River.
Beck, a short, somewhat chubby man with glasses and receding hair,
told me he was the chairman of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s
Clubs, North Central Division. e sportsmen were working on a bill to ban
the discharge of coal mine waste into the streams of the Commonwealth.
He wanted to enlist a lawyer to help him better understa nd the proposed
legislation, Pennsylvania House Bill 585, and to help him in his eorts to
get the support of the sportsmen of the area. He could not pay a legal fee for
this, he stated, and if I wanted to help, I would have to donate my services.
I had no particular interest in environmental law, but this legislation was
of great interest, both from my law school studies and work in the state
attorney general’s oce, where I helped Pennsylvania House members with
legislative research. I nodded my interest, and he handed me a copy of House
Bill 585 and asked me to review it and give my comments.
Within the week, we began a series of meetings with local sportsmen.
I drove the car, and Beck made the speeches. It was an environmental
education for me. Beck’s message was the same at ever y appearance—the
Susquehanna River belongs to everyone, not the coal companies and electric
utilities. Yet, he said, they treated the river as if it were theirs to waste or to
produce power without regard to the impacts on the natural resource s in the

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