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Re: “Family and protégés pay respects to slain coach” (Page B1, Dec. 7).

Coach John Beam changed my life when I was a 14-year-old kid on the Skyline High football field. I still remember getting flattened in a varsity drill and looking up to see Beam standing over me, demanding more because he saw more. That was his gift. He coached football, but he taught manhood: accountability, discipline, belief in yourself long before you earned it.

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Beam fought for me in the classroom, pushed me on the field and helped me get to college when the odds weren’t in my favor. He shaped generations of young men in Oakland with the same mix of toughness and love.

With his passing, the East Bay didn’t just l

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