About The Author

From the time that Beth learned how to read, she knew that she wanted to be a writer. She dreamed, at first, of being a novelist. Although she had story ideas that tantalized her imagination, somehow she could never figure out how her books should end. She devised many interesting characters and plotlines, but somehow the stories wanted to meander on forever.

After working on the Highland Park High School yearbook, The Albadome, serving as the Sports Editor in her senior year, Beth’s interests began to turn toward Journalism.

As she was about to enter Montclair State College in the fall of 1967, she announced to her parents that she wanted to be an investigative reporter, to which her father said, “No way. It’s too dangerous a career for a woman.” He also wanted his daughter to graduate with a degree that would give her  professional stability.

However, Jay understood his daughter’s passion and commitment for wanting to be a writer. “Take your degree in teaching English,” he advised, “and enroll in every writing course that the school offers. You can teach during the academic year and have all summer to write.” Beth accepted his advice and Jay continued to encourage her love of writing, helping her to get positions in Sports Journalism.

One fall evening in 1977, Jay called his daughter from an Executive Board Meeting of the New Jersey Interscholastic Coaches Association, an organization of which he was a founding member. The NJICA represented coaches from all the sports offered by secondary schools in New Jersey. The highlight of their year was a large clinic, offered in the spring, at Rutgers-the State University. The Executive Committee invited Beth to join them and create a newspaper to be distributed annually at that clinic. She eagerly accepted the job offer and started The Scorekeeper, an informative paper that covered high school sports throughout New Jersey.

Beth’s first teaching job was at Bridgewater-Raritan High School-East in Martinsville, NJ, where she worked for 14 years. After having her daughter, Shauna, Beth took a two year hiatus from teaching to spend some time with her little girl before restarting her career at John P. Stevens High School in Edison, NJ.

During her career as an English instructor at Bridgewater-Raritan High School-East and J.P. Stevens High School, she specialized in teaching Journalism as well as Creative Writing, advising both the schools’ literary magazines and newspapers. She loved exposing talented, aspiring authors to a plethora of genres, and encouraged her students to “find their voices” in order to make their writing authentic. Many of her former students have become professional writers, editors, or work in the publishing field.

Unfortunately, athletic teams for girls didn’t exist during Beth’s school days. She would have loved to play sports on a competitive level, but aside from the Girls Athletic Club, there were no girls teams for interscholastic competition. In fact, girls athletics did not appear in secondary education until nine years after her high school graduation with the passage of the Title IX law.

 Since the advent of girls track teams in the late 1970s, a need for women officials developed rapidly. As the result of encouragement from her father,  Beth became one of the first women track officials in New Jersey She quickly took on the responsibilities of being a meet director for the Central Jersey Cross Country Championships as well as being the first woman starter at the NJ State Outdoor Championships at Rutgers University. Her involvement as a track and field official heightened her awareness of the importance of equal opportunities for women athletes, a familiar theme in her sports writing. Beth served as the President of the Central Jersey Track and Field Officials Association, as well as the President of the NJ Executive Committee of Track and Field.

In 2003 Beth moved from the ranks of teaching into school administration, serving as the Assistant Principal of J.P. Stevens High School and Woodrow Wilson Middle School. She ended her career as the Principal of Edison’s two pre-schools.

After turning in her school keys and laptop in June of 2013, just a few months later, they were returned to her as Beth was elected to the Edison Board of Education. She spent seven years as a member of the Board, three of which she served as Vice President. Her experiences on the Board were exciting, educational, and often frustrating, but always rewarding. She will be grateful forever to the Edison community for electing her to such a prestigious position.

Beth’s Book Reviews has been a bi-weekly column in the tapinto.org online newspaper for over a decade. Syndicated in New Jersey and New York, Beth has had over 300 book reviews published through tapinto.

The Bridge to Victory, a biography of the military experiences and prominent athletic career of her father, Jay H. Dakelman is her first book to be published.

Beth lives in Somerset, NJ with her husband, Tom, and mini-dachshund, Dali. Her daughter, Shauna, and son-in-law, Jon are just a few miles away in Bridgewater-Raritan, where they live with their adorable, imaginative little girl, Lily.