In Iraq, he got the word out
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In December 2006, Vic Beck was spending his weekdays working in a public relations firm in Wellesley and his weekends watching his son's basketball team in Sudbury. But one phone call changed everything for a year.
Beck, a Navy reservist, learned that he had been activated. The following April he was shipped off to the Middle East where he became the spokesman for US Central Command in Dubai. By that August he was the chief of media operations in Iraq, where he remained until he returned home last spring.
As chief of media operations, Beck orchestrated two news conferences each week for Iraqi and international journalists. He was responsible for ensuring that everything ran smoothly - from getting translators and securing satellite uplinks to supplying photographic and video images, and making sure that the participants had proper entry access. He also helped high-ranking military officials prepare for the briefings.
"I had a staff of 85 people, from speech writers to press monitors, so all of the Western media outlets based in Iraq, such as ABC and The New York Times, were able to get what they needed," said Beck, who holds the rank of captain in the Navy Reserve. He also oversaw the "embed" program, in which reporters accompany troops on patrol.
"When I first arrived, there were mortar attacks every other day," said Beck, who lived in a small trailer outside the US Embassy in Baghdad.
"Typically there would be a few seconds warning that a missile or rocket was coming in," said Beck. "You could run to one of the cement shelters, or drop to the ground."
While Beck admits that receiving the phone call to ship out to the Middle East for a year caught him off guard, he was quite familiar with military life, since his father was a career Navy helicopter pilot. His home in Sudbury, where he lives with his wife and two children, is the only place Beck has ever stayed for more than six consecutive years.
Beck was born in Rhode Island and began his nomadic existence at 6 months of age when his family moved to Florida. Throughout his childhood he moved seven times, Beck said, with his stopovers including Monterey, Calif., and Yokohama, Japan.
Beck attended the State University of New York at Brockport, where he majored in communications, hoping to get into radio. He was a program director for the college radio station, and landed an internship at a radio talk show in Rochester, N.Y., where he'd wake up at 3 a.m. and read through the newspapers searching for interesting topics and people for the morning program's host.
Two months before graduation, Beck said, he realized there just aren't that many plum jobs in radio.
"I moved to my parents' house on Long Island and went back to one of my old summer jobs, moving furniture for
In an attempt to break into communications, Beck took a sales job, going door-to-door selling
"It was an awful experience," said Beck. "I knew the Navy and decided I'd learn to drive ships for a while and figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life."
Beck began training to become a surface warfare officer, a position that involves coordinating a Navy ship's movements, operations and weapons systems. When he got his orders to report the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise he couldn't have been happier.
"It was better than I ever imagined," said Beck. "It's like driving a city block, it's really a floating industrial city."
Beck's first chance to put his new skills into practice came in 1988, when a Navy frigate, the USS Samuel B. Roberts, hit an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf and nearly sank, with a 15-f00t-wide hole blasted in its hull.
"At the time, the USS Enterprise was operating outside of the Persian Gulf," said Beck. "In retaliation, our planes, which came off the Enterprise, attacked some oil platforms inside the gulf."
Some of the challenges in helping aircraft take off properly, explained Beck, include maneuvering the carrier to harness the necessary amount of wind to accommodate particular planes.
After serving on the Enterprise, Beck was one of the navigators for a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Richard E. Byrd, and completed a cruise around South America that included training exercises with US allies such as Brazil and Argentina.
"The most interesting area was going through the Straits of Magellan," said Beck, at the continent's southern tip. "We were working six hours on and six hours off, navigating around huge chunks of ice."
Beck spent five years on various ships before being assigned to a shore job, as assistant director of the Navy Office of Information in Boston, which covers all of New England.
"That's how I got started in public affairs and found public relations as a way that I could go back to my communications days," said Beck. After seven years of active duty, Beck became a civilian, yet remained a member of the Navy Reserve.
Now that he has returned from Iraq, Beck continues as a reservist, serving one weekend a month and two weeks out of the year in Washington, D.C., working in communications for the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a post now held by Admiral Michael G. Mullen.
Since leaving active duty Beck has worked as the head of corporate communications for a number of companies. Currently he is the director of communication planning and strategy for S4 Inc., which is based in Burlington and has offices across the country, including several military installations. At S4, Beck provides strategic communication consulting for various government organizations, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and private businesses.
"Whatever efforts Vic needed to get the job done, he did, and never complained about it," said Scott Silk, a friend and former boss of Beck.
"I frequently call on him from my cellphone to navigate me through the streets of Boston, as he knows them by heart - he has a wonderful sense of direction and a great memory."
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