Fingerprints & Footprints: Ray Beck’s Columbia by Ray Beck (softcover)

Fingerprints & Footprints: Ray Beck’s Columbia by Ray Beck (softcover)

the Boone County History & Culture Center benefit the organization

$30.00
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Fingerprints & Footprints: Ray Beck’s Columbia by Ray Beck

For 45 years, Ray Beck helped shape the city of Columbia, including 21 years as City Manager during a time of extraordinary growth and transformation. In Fingerprints & Footprints: Ray Beck’s Columbia, Beck reflects on his remarkable career and the people, projects, and decisions that helped build the Columbia we know today.

From parks, trails, transportation, and utilities to flood management, regional planning, and major public spaces, Beck’s work left an enduring mark on the community. His memoir offers a firsthand perspective on Columbia’s evolution, from a small city with limited infrastructure to a thriving and nationally recognized community.

Co-written with Jodie Jackson, former Columbia Tribune journalist and Editor-in-Chief of CoMo Magazine and CoMo Business Times, this long-awaited memoir is both a personal story and an important piece of Columbia history.

 

About the Author

Ray Beck dedicated forty-six years of public service to the city of Columbia, Missouri, serving as the Public Works Director from 1961 to 1985 and as City Manager from 1985 until his retirement in 2006. A farm boy from Miller County and a veteran with a 23-year military career, Beck utilized his background in sanitary engineering to reshape and modernize Columbia's infrastructure.
Throughout his prolific career, Beck oversaw thousands of critical infrastructure projects, including major sewer and water system overhauls, the expansion of the Columbia Regional Airport, and the landmark 1968 city annexation policy. Known as the "gyroscope for local civic management," his strategic planning directly shaped the modernization, parks, and daily utilities of the modern Columbia community. Following his retirement from city government, he continued his civic impact by volunteering as the project manager to help build Father Tolton Regional Catholic High School.
 

Product Specifications

Published by the Boone County History & Culture Center benefit the organization, 2026. Paperback, 316 pages.

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