Don A. Beckstead was a 28-year-old Arizona highway patrolman based in Houck. Born in Phoenix in August 1942, he served in the U.S. Navy Seabees before joining the Arizona Department of Public Safety and patrolled the isolated stretch of Interstate 40 near the New Mexico line with his wife Betty and their two young sons living in Houck.

On the evening of February 5, 1971, after a fellow officer had been shot earlier that day, Beckstead stopped a 1968 Pontiac for an unsafe pass east of Houck. The motorist, identified as Bertram Greenberg, drew a stolen service revolver and shot Beckstead in the abdomen. Beckstead was taken to McKinley Hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, where surgeons treated massive internal injuries; he initially rallied but went into acute renal failure and died en route to Albuquerque for dialysis. No arrest was made for his shooting because the suspect was killed by New Mexico officers during the suspect’s subsequent flight.

Beckstead’s name appears on state and national law-enforcement memorials and a sandstone marker was placed along eastbound I-40 near milepost 354 close to Houck. Does anyone have memories of Beckstead, his family, or that stretch of I-40 on the night of February 5, 1971?