Bill Beckham

Age: 58; Residence: Detroit
Occupation: President/chief executive officer of the Skillman Foundation
Why honored: For efforts to improve DetroitÕs public education

“We as a community needed to do a much better job at how we develop and educate our children. The regeneration of the city is tied more to the education of our children than it is to its physical structures.” -- Bill Beckham

He’s an object lesson for those who seek change in education despite the obstacles

hildren have long been at the heart of Bill Beckham’s public service in Detroit. But never before has the former Coleman Young staffer played such a prominent part in shaping the future of the city’s young people.

    In 1999 Beckham was appointed by Mayor Dennis Archer to serve on the city’s new seven-member school-reform board. Many community groups, angered at the removal of the elected board, chastised Beckham for accepting the appointment. Activists hollered at him during board meetings, and some civic leaders caller him a traitor.

    But Beckham believed the 167,000-student district was in need of drastic change — and he acted. In the last year, he has overseen the search for a chief executive, helped develop a reform plan and recruited many business partners for the district. It was Beckham who first suggested hiring David Adamany, former Wayne State University president, as interim chief executive.

    “We as a community needed to do a much better job at how we develop and educate our children,” says Beckham, who has raised five now-grown children with his wife, Mattie.

    “The regeneration of the city is tied more to the education of our children than it is to its physical structures.”

    Beckham, a board member of Schools of the 21st Century, a national initiative aimed at improving public education, is considered by some to have played the pivotal role in reforming Detroit schools.

    “Bill almost single-handedly pushed people to take on the issue of improving the outcome in Detroit schools,” says Ismael Ahmed, a former Michiganian of the Year who is executive director of the Arab Community Center for Economic & Social Services (ACCESS). The Dearborn-based center looks out for the interests of thousands of Arab students in Detroit.

    Beckham’s day job is president and chief executive officer of the Skillman Foundation in Detroit, where he works with local groups to improve relationships between children and adults.

    Before moving to Skillman last November, Beckham for three years served as head of New Detroit. Improving race relations was a key assignment at New Detroit.

    “He’s made a real difference in making people in the city understand the importance of race relations,” Ahmed says. “Bill moves things. He changes things. You follow behind him and you see a path of change.”

    In the early 1970s, Beckham was Young’s first deputy mayor. He later served in the Carter administration as assistant secretary of Treasury and deputy secretary of transportation. He was vice-president of Unisys Corp. before returning to Detroit.

    When it came to his own children, Beckham says he stressed the importance of lifelong learning. Three of his five children carry two college degrees, and one child is still a college undergraduate.

    “It was very important for us that our children learn and read as much as possible. From that, they gained the ability to make sound judgments,” Beckham says.

    In turn, Beckham says, raising children made him more acutely aware of the problems of less fortunate children, spurring him to immerse himself in issues affecting youth.

    — Brian Harmon