FROM GOON TO GENT

The Teamsters' Frank Brewster

THE witness before the McClellan committee wore monogrammed silk shirts and tailor-made suits that followed more after George Raft than Brooks Brothers. As he gestured with his carefully manicured hands, he flashed gold cuff links. His handsome face was bronzed by many a day spent under the sun at Santa Anita, Tanforan and Bay Meadows. Only his slightly cauliflowered left ear betrayed the past of Frank William Brewster, 60, West Coast boss of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as a brick-fisted mug. The story of the first phase of the McClellan committee's investigation is the story of how Frank Brewster used Teamster funds to make himself a real gent in the world of showy blondes, fast horses and high-proof bourbon.

A Seattle postman's son, "Handsome Frank" Brewster began driving a team of horses at 16, joined the Teamsters, spent two years in the Army during and after World War I, and returned to Seattle to become recording secretary of the Teamsters' Local 174 in 1921. His salary: $2 a month. During those early years, he was senior to and far overshadowed a turnip-shaped young Seattle Teamster named Dave Beck. "Frank had the interests of the working stiff at heart," recalls a Teamster veteran. "He'd put his neck on the line any time to sign up a new member, while Dave was making speeches at union meetings." But in 1925, when the Teamsters held their national convention in Seattle, it was Speechmaker Beck who caught the favor of International President Dan Tobin. Says another old Teamster: "Dan thought he could control a nice, clean-cut lad like Dave Beck." Result: Brewster was bypassed, and Beck got the promotion-promising job as I.B.T. organizer in Seattle.

"Tough?" Dave Beck issued directives, made statements, planned strategy, and, without suffering a single bruise on his pudgy body, became chairman of the Teamsters' Western Conference. Frank Brewster was his enforcer -- and he was a good one. Arrested three times for picket-line brawling, Brewster once landed his mighty right hand on a policeman. Another cop remembers what happened after Brewster was taken to headquarters: "We stopped the elevator between the first and second floors and we worked him over. I've never seen a guy get such a beating. Finally he slumped down on his knees. We took the elevator to the second floor, picked him up and started to drag him out. All of a sudden he exploded, swung around with his handcuffs, knocked one cop cold onto the concrete and gashed another. It took the whole damn force on duty to stop him. Tough? I never seen a man that tough."

But Frank Brewster wanted to be more than a goon. He learned that the well-dressed man does not wear purple shirts and scarlet neckties. He prettied up his language to the point where it would no longer shock a waterfront madam, and he worked for an air of well-dressed urbanity. He became a tab-grabbing customer at Vic Rosellini's in Seattle and Del Vecchio's in San Francisco. His third wife (he has been divorced by all three) had a certain standing in San Francisco society. He was admitted to Seattle's semi-stylish Washington Athletic Club. Most of all, Frank Brewster followed the horses, as owner and fan. A fast trader, he has paid as much as $25,000 for a horse: Brief Moment, winner of the $10,000 Longacres Mile at Seattle in 1939. He was appointed to the Washington State Horse Racing Commission by Democratic Governor Clarence D. Martin in 1939, and was named chairman by Democratic Governor Monrad C. Wallgren in 1945. (In between, he was fired by Republican Governor Arthur B. Langlie in 1941, and he was refired by Langlie in 1948.)

"Ignore." In 1953 Dave Beck was named president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and Frank Brewster took his place at the head of the Western Conference. His duties kept him traveling, and so did his horses; he therefore sold his Seattle home and began living in hotel rooms. Under Brewster, the West Coast Teamsters have given heavily to charity, sponsored a classical-music program on television, with Seattle Symphony Conductor Milton Katims presiding.

But Frank Brewster's past remained an embarrassment. When, as befits an ambitious labor statesman, a biography was being written about President Dave Beck, the authors had a problem: how to deal with the part Brewster had played in Beck's life. They suggested to Beck that Brewster could be handled in one of three ways: 1) he could be played up as a picket-line hero, 2) he could be treated as a roughneck problem child, 3) he could be ignored. Beck sat thinking for a long while, finally moved his soft hands across the table and made a one-word decision:

"Ignore."

By last week, nearly everyone in organized labor was wishing that Frank Brewster could be that easily ignored.

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