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OAKLAND, Calif. – A celebration of life<\/a> for legendary football coach John Beam, who was fatally shot at Laney College in November, is scheduled for Saturday afternoon at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts.<\/p>\n The celebration of life will start at 2 p.m.<\/a> at the center located at 10 10th Street. The memorial event is expected to be attended by Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, U.S. Congresswoman Lateefah Simon and Beam\u2019s wife and daughters.<\/p>\n The backstory:<\/p>\n Beam, 66, died on Nov. 14, the day after he was shot at the Laney College fieldhouse<\/a>, where the school’s athletic facilities are housed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 27-year-old suspect, Cedric Irving Jr.<\/a>, was arrested that same day as the shooting.<\/p>\n Beam’s storied coaching career began in 1979 and spanned some 45 years. He started at Serra High School in San Diego, where he’s from, before coaching football at Skyline High School in the 1980s.<\/p>\n At Skyline, he won 15 league championships and celebrated four undefeated seasons.<\/p>\n He then went on to Laney College in 2004, where he served as the football team\u2019s running backs coach before becoming the college’s athletic director in 2006.<\/p>\n He took on the role as head football coach in 2012, and in 2020, he received national attention when Netflix featured Laney’s football program in its popular “Last Chance U” series.<\/p>\n Beam retired from his head coach position in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n He’s credited for producing more than 20 NFL players during his time at Laney and Skyline.<\/p>\n News<\/a>Sports<\/a>Oakland<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND, Calif. – A celebration of life for legendary football coach John Beam, who was fatally shot at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,1184,100,143,145,144,127,1181],"class_list":{"0":"post-128443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-oakland","12":"tag-oakland-headlines","13":"tag-oakland-news","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}