Stanley Beck

Stanley Beck, 93, died March 13, 2022, at his home in Brussels, Belgium, after a distinguished career as a NATO diplomat and Navy JAG.

Born in Baltimore to Benjamin and Cecilia (née Juster), he graduated from Baltimore City College in 1946. Beck was in Zeta Beta Tau fraternity as a freshman at Franklin & Marshall College and for the undergraduate year he spent at Columbia College, when he began the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. He was at Columbia University in the City of New York for four years, including three at Columbia Law School, before being admitted to the Maryland Bar.

Beck spent a summer at the Yale Institute of Far Eastern Languages learning Chinese, an experience that sparked a life-long love. He went on to master French and Italian, in addition to German, Russian, Romanian, and a half-dozen other languages.



His career began with 11 years in the Navy, mostly in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. Eventually becoming lieutenant commander, he spent two years aboard the USS Columbus and resided in Naples, Italy, then San Diego, California, and Paris, France. Beck served several decades in Brussels as a diplomat for NATO and the US Defense Department. He finished his career as a French translator at NATO with the US Mission and the International Staff.

He is survived by an older sister, Sylvia Beck Piven, of Baltimore. He leaves two children, Marissa and Tony (Tanya) Beck, and two grandsons, Ilya and Noam. His wife Hedy, who survived the wartime occupation of France, died in 2017 at 94.