Carles Beckett, Madera’s CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer)

For The Madera Tribune

Carles and Georgia Beckett on their wedding day.

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It was four in the morning, July 17, 1954, when the woman crumpled to the floor. Her sobbing woke her four children; in an instant they joined her, brokenhearted and weeping uncontrollably. The policeman standing over them watched helplessly. He had just told the Beckett family that their father and husband would not be coming home. He had been killed earlier that day in an automobile crash.

The grieving, young mother was no stranger to the difficult realities of life. She was born to a single mother who gave her up when she was ten-years-old. She never knew her father who went to prison when she was a child.

Violet Mae Dunn went to live with distant relatives, the Nash family, in 1938. By that time, she had been able to finish the third grade. That would be the end of her formal education. The Nash family had several small children, and Violet became a surrogate mother to them. Then she met Jesse Carles Beckett, better known as J.C. They were both just 16-years-old when they got married. The next year, in 1945, Jesse and Violet became parents when their first child, a son, was born. She named him Junior Carles Beckett. He would not always carry that name; later it was changed to just Carles. He was followed by two sisters, Virginia and Kay, in quick succession. All three were born at home.