1930-2025

C. Arlen Beam, a onetime seed corn salesman who completed law school when he was 35 years old and later went on to serve for almost 40 years as a federal judge, first at the District Court level in Nebraska and later as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, died Oct. 31 in Lincoln. He was 95.

At the time of his death, Judge Beam was living at The Landing, a senior living community in Lincoln. His wife of 74 years, Betty, had passed away in May.

A public memorial service to celebrate the lives of Judge Beam and Betty is planned for noon on Friday, Nov. 21, at Eastridge Presbyterian Church, 1135 Eastridge Drive, in Lincoln. Burial will be private.

During his tenure with the federal courts, Judge Beam wrote more than 2,700 opinions on a wide range of legal issues.  Those issues included several that were politically sensitive, such as Kansas City’s school desegregation plan in the 1990s; a sexual harassment lawsuit involving President Bill Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas; and the viability of federal drug laws criminalizing medical marijuana in California.

Other cases presented equally thorny legal questions but attracted less public attention, such as an antitrust case involving an alleged conspiracy by fertilizer manufacturers to fix potash prices; legal disputes involving Native American tribes that addressed questions of tribal sovereignty; and a case that set criteria for denying benefits under retirement and health plans regulated by the federal government.

President Ronald Reagan had appointed Judge Beam to the federal District Court in 1981, assuming a position vacated by Robert V. Denney, a former Republican congressman who had represented Nebraska’s First District in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Reagan then elevated Judge Beam to the Eighth Circuit appeals court in 1987.

In 2001, Judge Beam assumed senior status with the Eighth Circuit, which is roughly akin to taking semi-retirement, although for almost two additional decades he continued to participate in the three-judge panels that do much of the work of the federal appeals courts. He moved to inactive status in 2020.

Prior to taking the federal bench, Judge Beam had a successful law practice in Lincoln, specializing in trial work and lobbying. He had long been active in Republican Party politics, and for a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Judge Beam was an informal legal adviser to Charles Thone, who had been a Republican congressman representing Nebraska’s First District before becoming governor in 1979.

Thone, who died in 2018, was pivotal in advocating for Judge Beam’s appointment to the federal District Court. At a 2001 ceremony honoring Judge Beam’s service, Thone recalled taking a call from a staff member of the Reagan Administration’s Justice Department, asking the then-governor to provide three names to consider for Denney’s court vacancy.

“Yeah, I’ll give you three names,” Thone said. “The first is C. Arlen Beam. The second is C.A. Beam. The third is Arlen Beam.” Reagan went on to nominate Judge Beam for the District Court vacancy, which was in Omaha. The U.S. Senate confirmed him in November 1981, and he took the bench in January 1982.

Judge Beam and Betty moved to Omaha until he was appointed to the Eighth Circuit about six years later, at which point they relocated back to Lincoln, where Judge Beam maintained his principal chambers in the Robert V. Denney Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse until taking inactive status.

A career that carried Clarence Arlen Beam to one of the highest courts in the nation was not anything he had contemplated while growing up in Nebraska’s Sandhills in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

He was born on January 14, 1930, in Stapleton, a community of about 350 residents that is the seat of Logan County. His mother, Cecil, was a schoolteacher and his father, also named Clarence, was a farmer, rancher and rural mail carrier. Through most of his life, Arlen chose to go by his middle name to avoid confusion with his father. He was the third eldest of four children. His older sisters, Mercedes and Donna Jean, and his younger brother, Charles, all preceded him in death.

Arlen’s experiences growing up in a closeknit farming and ranching community remained central to whom he became as an adult. He decorated his courthouse offices with photos, paintings and sculptures with Western Nebraska motifs, and he favored cowboy boots when the occasion was appropriate.  Until his death, he subscribed to the Stapleton Enterprise, the town’s weekly newspaper.

After finishing high school in Stapleton in 1947, as part of a class of just 14 students, Arlen headed to Lincoln to attend the University of Nebraska. As he later explained in a short oral history for Creighton University, his mother had been “bound and determined” that he and his siblings would continue their education. “It was given early on,” he explained, “that we’d go to college. She was a teacher.”

He earned a Regents scholarship to NU, along with a grant from the Union Pacific Railroad and a stipend from KFAB Radio for winning a 4-H public speaking contest. That was not enough to pay all his expenses, so he lined up three part-time jobs in Lincoln and began a dual-degree program in agronomy and agricultural journalism. He joined the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, which was near NU’s East Campus, where most of the university’s agriculture programs were located.

Toward the conclusion of his undergraduate studies, Arlen took a job as a feature writer for the Nebraska Farmer magazine. That permitted him to travel the state, to pay college expenses, and, as important, to buy wedding rings so that he could marry his sweetheart, Betty Lou Fletcher. She was an NU student whom he had started dating after meeting her at a campus event in November 1950.

They married in July 1951 at a small Presbyterian church in Lincoln, just after Arlen had finished his bachelor’s degree. By September of that year, the newlyweds were headed to a U.S. Army training center in Aberdeen, MD, where Arlen would begin military service that eventually would take him to the Korean Peninsula as a combat engineer.

In late March 1952, Betty gave birth to their first son, in Aberdeen, and a few weeks later, Arlen embarked from Seattle for his military assignment in Asia. Betty returned to Lincoln with their newborn to live with her parents, and she remained there during Arlen’s deployment.

Arlen recalled that he and Betty wrote each other letters every day during the time that he was in Korea. Sometimes, if Arlen knew that he would not be able to send Betty a letter for a few days, he would write several in advance and have an Army clerk mail one each day.

After almost two years on active duty, first in Maryland and then Korea, Arlen returned to the United States in August 1953. Betty met him at Fort Carson, CO, where he was discharged from active duty into the Army Reserves. (He remained in the Army Reserves until 1964, ending his military service at the rank of captain.) Arlen and Betty traveled back to Lincoln, and in September 1953, Arlen started law school at the University of Nebraska – a career path that he had settled on while away on active duty.

After only a year, though, a health problem of Betty’s led him to withdraw from law school. He took a job with Steckley Hybrid Corn Co., which was based in Lincoln. He would work for Steckley for about the next 10 years, first selling seed corn to farmers in Iowa and Illinois but eventually returning to a job at the company headquarters in Lincoln.

In 1963, Steckley agreed to merge with another agribusiness corporation, and Arlen decided that he wanted to finish the law degree that he had started 10 years earlier, rather than relocate with Steckley to Iowa. But was that possible? A conversation he had with the dean of the NU School of Law led to an accommodation that allowed Arlen to pick up where he had left off, so he resumed his legal studies at NU in fall of 1963.

By this time, his and Betty’s family had grown to five boys. To earn money as he embarked on the final two years of law school, they set up an advertising and public relations business in Lincoln. He became active in local Republican Party politics, and in 1964 managed Sen. Barry Goldwater’s Nebraska presidential campaign while attending law school full time.

After completing his law degree in 1965 and passing the bar exam, he joined the Lincoln firm of Chambers, Holland & Dudgeon, quickly earning a partnership. In 1971, he helped merge that firm with another in Lincoln to form Knudsen, Berkheimer, Endacott & Beam. His formal association with Knudsen, Berkheimer ended in late 1981, when he was confirmed to the position on the federal District Court.

When Judge Beam began his tenure with the federal courts, he ended his political involvements but nonetheless remained active with the local and state bar associations, as well as with other legal and civic organizations. He was a lifetime member of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, and he took on various administrative or policy roles within the federal court system.

For decades, has was an active member of Lincoln Downtown Rotary Club #14, once traveling to South America as part of a delegation from Rotary International. He also was a member of Shriners International and was a master Mason with the North Star Lodge #227 in Nebraska.

Judge Beam’s religious faith was a central aspect of the life he and Betty established.  Through the years, he and Betty attended various Presbyterian churches in Lincoln and Omaha. At the time of his death, he was a member of Eastridge Presbyterian Church. Though declining health had prevented him from attending Eastridge services in recent years, he participated regularly in the nondenominational services at The Landing.

His heath challenges also ended two longtime passions. He and Betty were members of the Lincoln Country Club, which afforded him the chance to play golf regularly for many years. Unlike so many of his other pursuits, golf was not something at which he excelled naturally, but he enjoyed the game nonetheless.

Another love was jogging, which is something he did almost daily until he was in his late 80s, even while away on business trips. A typical outing was 5 miles or so, and usually he was on his own. In bad weather, he would resort to a treadmill that he installed in the basement of his Lincoln home. From time to time, a fall produced skinned knees and elbows, and on one occasion scrapes on his face. Despite Betty’s urging that he find a recreational pursuit less likely to result in a broken limb, he remained undeterred.

Judge Beam was an extrovert, and he cherished the relationships that he developed with friends, associates, neighbors – and even a taxi driver whom he hired regularly when he and his staff traveled to St. Louis on court business. He was particularly proud of his association with his trusted judicial assistant, Gini Russell. He hired her in 1979 while in private practice, and they continued to work together until he closed his judicial offices in 2020.

Federal judges typically hire law school graduates as “clerks,” mostly for a year or two, to assist with legal research, to help draft opinions, and to take on other tasks for the courts. A federal judicial clerkship is competitive and prestigious, and many tend to go to graduates of law schools with high national rankings.

Judge Beam, who had 67 clerks during his time on the bench, made a point of seeking out candidates from Midwestern law schools, observing on more than one occasion that he considered the top graduates of those schools just as capable as students from the more prominent universities that tend to dominate hiring for federal clerkships.

Through the years, his clerks held Judge Beam in equally high regard as a mentor and legal thinker. At a 2001 ceremony marking the unveiling of Judge Beam’s portrait at the federal courthouse in Omaha, Moira White Kennedy spoke for current and former clerks.

“Years ago, when we accepted our positions in Judge Beam’s chambers, we were excited at the prospect of working for the Eighth Circuit and for Judge Beam,” White Kennedy said, “but we had no idea what an honor we were in for, not only because of the nature of the job but because of the nature of the judge.”

Two decades later, similar sentiments were voiced in a personal note that one of Judge Beam’s last two clerks, Kris Brenneis, sent to him upon taking inactive status. (Judge Beam had hired Brenneis and Amy Vyhlidal as permanent clerks during his tenure on senior status, and they worked with him for many years.) “Quite simply,” Brenneis wrote, “you are a remarkable, multifaceted man who is as enamored with listening to the symphony as you are with explaining different breeds of cattle to your unlearned clerks.”

His clerks and colleagues likely would agree that important hallmarks of Judge Beam’s approach to the law – and to life generally – were to treat others respectfully and, above all else, to understand thoroughly a situation, a set of options, or an issue before proceeding. One of his favorite aphorisms was “out of an abundance of caution,” a phrase that he would sprinkle liberally into conversations almost any time that he was offering advice or warnings to his sons, to his clients, to his law clerks.

Indeed, at the 2001 portrait ceremony, Judge Beam’s friend and former law partner, Larry Ruth, recalled often hearing the judge advise that “out of an abundance of caution, we need to thoroughly research this issue.” Ruth then turned to the judge and added: “I don’t know why it is, Judge, but it’s the law clerks that seem to be laughing mostly!”

Judge Beam is survived by his sons and their spouses Randy Beam and Jerry Baldasty of Seattle; Jim Beam of Rockford, IL; Tom and Debbie Beam of Littleton, CO; Brad Beam of Lincoln, and Greg and Flora Beam of Everett, WA; four granddaughters; two great-grandchildren; and 11 nieces and nephews.

En lieu of flowers or other gifts, the Beam family encourages donations to the Eastridge Presbyterian Church Food Pantry, 1135 Eastridge Drive, Lincoln, NE 68510.