My grandfather, Glen Beck, was a Marine in the 2nd Marine Division, armored unit, in WWII. During his service, he was the driver of his units commander utilizing a Willys MB. Like many GI’s, my grandfather fell in love with his Jeep and wanted one for himself. He purchased this CJ-3A brand new in 1949. It has been in my family ever since. It was once broken down and rebuilt (my father cannot remember why his father decided to do this, but the speculation was just to do it) in the early 1960’s. My grandfather loved this Jeep and it spend countless hours and mile driving the mountains and hills around Salem, OR, before my grandparents relocated to Libby, MT where the logging roads were it’s playground. It handled tank traps to blocked roads like a champ and bagged many deer and even an elk shot from the passenger seat! The Jeep did was parked after my grandfathers untimely death in 1989. It was brought to my father’s house and when I was 12 years old I learned to drive it around our acreage in Whitefish, MT. It has no brakes so I learned how to gear down and use tire and soft dirt of the shoulders (with an occasional foot drag) for stopping. In 2005, after bringing the Jeep to my home in Missoula, MT, I tore it down to individual parts, leaving only the engine on a stand in one unit. From there it sat in my garage until I moved my family to Lincoln, NE where we reside today. During COVID, I took the opportunity to resume my frame-up restoration which I completed this past Easter. This Jeep has an eternal number of memories for my father, so my goal was to have my father secretly sit in the Jeep when he made his visit for his great-grandson’s baptism. It worked! He didn’t know the engine was installed (last time he’d seen it I had the engine on a stand in my shed) so I reached over, hit the foot starter, and off we went. He was in tears! Not far down the block he said…can I drive? We spent the weekend driving around Lincoln and hearing an immeasurable number of stories about learning to drive in the Jeep (just like I did), the Marine-style parenting of my grandfather, and stories related to the Jeep. My favorite was when the spare tire was ripped off it’s original side-mount on a tree in pursuit of a large whitetail buck! If you count the Jeep (we named the Jeep Glen) then this is a 5 generation picture worth a thousand words. Can’t wait to hand this family heirloom off to my boys someday.
Kaiser Willys Jeep Blog Story – Jeremy Beck
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