"I started feeling under the weather and thought that I had a cold or something," Beckman said. "It went on and it gradually got worse and worse. And in May 2004, I got diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which is cancer. It's pretty serious. By the time they diagnosed me, it had spread to a Stage 3B, which is right up there.
"The nice thing is I had a passion. I had the drag racing to keep me going," he said, adding that the sport was in addition, of course, to the support he received from his then-fiancee and now wife, Jenna, and from his friends. "Throughout all the chemotherapy, I was lucky. I missed only two drag races and only two days teaching at Frank Hawley's School. So two of my biggest loves kept me in the game. Thank God everything worked out for the better."
Curiously, Beckman said, "I don't think I'm a better person because I had cancer. I actually liked me better before. I'm only about 85 percent back. But I'm a more aware person, more enlightened. I'm actually a more useful tool now. I have credibility because I have lived through some of those things."
He said he is glad to be able to share with others that their fears are normal and their feelings aren’t weird -- and that they aren't alone in their problems.
"I've always been a believer in you reap what you sow," Beckman said. "So when I got cancer, I felt shame and guilt, like I must have done something bad to get cancer." He said he realized that isn't the case -- "Bad things happent o good people and vice versa" -- and that thousands battle the disease every day. He said he wants to let folks know that no matter what they're facing, "you don’t feel like you're an island."
He said he doesn't sugar-coat situations, though. He said he tells people that bad situations don't go away automatically. He said that during his cancer treatments, he sometimes would go to bed with a cross around his neck because he honestly didn't think his chances of waking up in the morning were better than 50-50.
But he said he always is happy to pass along the fun memories he had of finding his passion as young boy.
Beckman said he can remember vividly being seven years old, charging toward the race track when his uncle would take him and brother Ted to fabled "Orange County." It was a dragstrip that symbolized Southern California's cradle of hot rodding but fell victim to urbanization. However, when Beckman grew up and at age 38 first sat in team owner Dexter Tuttle's 7,000-horsepower car, the memories were as powerful as his engine. It was if he revived Orange County's iconic ribbons of asphalt.
"I still can remember the smell . . . the ground and how it shook you . . . I even remember what the nachos tasted like! It woke something in me," Beckman said, evidence of nitro and nostalgia intoxication. 
"As soon as we'd get to the track, I jump out of the car and start running," Beckman said, laughing decades later at the sight of his flustered uncle trying rather unsuccessfully to corral young him or harness his enthusiasm until the car shut off.
"I drove 12 races in the Top Fuel class that year, 2005, and I still run toward the grandstands when the dragster run!" he said.
And that is exactly the kind of enthusiasm he encouraged those youngsters at the Santa Monica YMCA to develop.