Four Kern County leaders to receive honorary doctorates

Beaver still recalls being teased by his high school classmates because "he couldn't speak a word of French" and the beautiful teacher from Switzerland who helped him learn the language.

"'We are not going to read,'" Beaver said, imitating his teacher's heavy French accent. "'We are not going to write. We are going to speak French.' Class met every day. Every day I was hearing French."

Each student was assigned to give a speech, and when the teacher announced Beaver's upcoming slot, "Everyone was laughing. 'Beaver, speak French? Are you kidding?'

"But the night before, I woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning. I had been dreaming in French. So the next day, I got up in front of the class. Everyone was giggling. Who knows what I talked about, but my classmates were all bug-eyed! My teacher said, 'Mr. Beaver, you sound like a guy from Paris. What happened to you?'"

In that moment, a lifelong love for languages was born. "If I could hear it, I could speak it," Beaver said. "That's what happened."

He has made it his mission to share that passion for language with scores of high school, university and law students, funding travel, primarily to France and Sweden, in cultural enrichment opportunities through the Dennis and Anne Beaver Foundation.

Beaver, an attorney and legal advice columnist for Kiplinger.com and several California newspapers, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at CSUB's spring commencement ceremonies.

"I'm very appreciative," he said. "I don't know what I've done that's so exceptional. My wife and I are very private people. We do this because it's the right thing to do."

After graduating from high school, Beaver attended Los Angeles Valley College, taking every French course available, before transferring to Cal State Northridge, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in speech/communications with a minor in French. After Northridge, he attended Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

On the strength of his native-level fluency in French, the Central Intelligence Agency attempted to recruit Beaver, but he made a decision that would set the course of his professional life and bring him to Bakersfield. In 1973, he joined the Kern County District Attorney's Office, where he founded the first consumer protection department.

"It was a great place to work, preparing me well for the day I started my own practice in general litigation, personal injury and divorce," he said.

Beaver and his wife, Anne, a paralegal in his practice, realized quickly that "especially handling personal injury cases, lawyers are often grossly over-compensated for our social value," he said. "We knew we had to do something with this money to benefit others."

In their home, Beaver's love of language carried over into the raising of their son, Ian. He insisted that Anne, who was born in Hong Kong, speak to Ian in her native Cantonese.

"There is evidence that speaking a tonal language, such as Chinese, facilitates learning other languages with an ability to mimic accents. Ian can pass for a French native," he said.

Since that fateful day 60 years ago when he got up and nailed his foreign language assignment to the disbelief of his classmates, Beaver has mastered Swedish and conducted public speaking seminars in Sweden, in Swedish. He still has the ability to dream in both French and Swedish on command.

"Language has been a gift, and our foundation is a way of saying thank you to that year in high school, Sylvie Walker, my French teacher, and all French teachers, and ultimately all French teachers," Beaver said.