OAKLAND — John Beam, the legendary football coach who shaped multiple generations of student athletes, anchoring Oakland’s sports community and becoming a respected leader at Laney College, died from a gunshot wound in a shooting at the school’s campus, police said Friday. He was 66.

“We are devastated that John Beam, our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, coach mentor and friend has passed,” his family said in a statement, asking for privacy. “Our hearts are full from the outpouring of support … We are deeply grateful for your continued prayers well wishes and thoughts.”

Beam was pronounced dead at 10 a.m. Friday, police said. He had been hospitalized since the day before, after a gunman shot the college’s longtime athletics director in the head in the Field House building, where Beam had an office, according to sources with direct knowledge of the incident.

A suspect arrested early Friday morning was identified by police as Cedric Irving Jr., a 27-year-old Oakland resident, who was known to loiter at the downtown campus.

It was a shocking loss for athletes, coaches and Oakland residents who had come to rely on the wisdom and dedication of a man known around town simply as Coach Beam.

His gruff demeanor, bushy mustache, and deadpan honesty made Beam a recognizable character in Oakland’s rich tapestry of sports figures. Those who knew Beam closely remembered most his personal efforts to steer generations of young athletes toward a brighter future.

During a 40-plus-year career in Oakland, Beam coached Skyline High School’s football team to numerous Oakland Athletic League championships before leaving in 2004 to become the running backs coach at Laney. Beam led the program as head coach from 2012 until last year, when he stepped down to focus on his role as athletics director. “It’s been a good run, brother,” he said in an interview upon retiring.

“Football is about family,” he said in an early scene in the Netflix series “Last Chance U,” which documented the Laney Eagles’ 2019 season, a year after they won the state championship.

Erika Rosario, the daughter of Stan Peters, who preceded Beam as Laney’s football coach, described Beam as bringing “those successful ‘old school’ ways into a new age.” Indeed, fans of “Last Chance U” quickly took to Beam, noting in online discussions that his swagger and teaching style offered a much softer touch than the stereotype of coaches who bark at players.

The coach embraced the support, sending brief, personalized videos to fans for $30 apiece on his Cameo page. “I can tell how much you care,” noted one of the many five-star reviews.

John Edward Beam was born in January 1959 in San Diego, to a Navy veteran father and Korean mother. He graduated from Kearny High School — which, a couple years ago, inducted Beam into its athletics hall of fame — and stuck around to begin his coaching career at what was then called Serra High.

Football brought him up to Oakland, where he was hired at Skyline High in 1982. The program became storied during his tenure, inspiring awe and respect from rival coaches, who noted how Beam’s kindness seemed to shine from beneath his blunt temperament.

At Laney, Beam transcended coaching to become a community leader, urging Oakland residents to look to the junior college as a central engine of city life. His program maintained a 90 percent graduation and transfer rate for his student athletes, which college officials described as “extraordinary.”

In an early scene from the fifth season of “Last Chance U,” Beam gets slightly choked up as he describes running into the stands after winning the 2018 state championship to hug his wife, Cindi, and daughters Monica and Sonjha.

He and Cindi raised the family in the Oakland hills above Skyline Boulevard, not far from the high school. But Beam got all around town, at one point teaching P.E. at Frick Junior High in East Oakland, where alum Terry Butler recalled the coach spending long hours mentoring him and other kids.

Beam’s signature outro during locker-room speeches and motivational talks became legend, in Oakland and on Netflix alike. The sign-off received a nod Friday from Piedmont Police Chief Frederick Shavies, who had known Beam personally and first met him when he was in junior high.

“I knew that if Coach was here, he would end by saying ‘Two claps, ready, ready,’” Shavies, a former Oakland police commander, said at a news conference.

It often seemed Beam shared some kind of connection with everyone in Oakland, including Mayor Barbara Lee, whose nephew was coached by Beam at Skyline High. “He gave Oakland’s youth their best chance,” Lee said. “And he never stopped fighting for them.”

The warmth around Beam only brought the visceral, senseless nature of his killing into harsher focus.

More painful still for those who loved Beam was that his life was taken at Laney, where he’s held court for decades and was known to have an open-door policy. C.J. Anderson, a retired NFL pro-bowler who now coaches high school football in Benicia, declined to be interviewed Friday, saying he would instead “pour into my kids, like (Beam) did me.”

Keith Bhonapha, a running backs coach at Michigan State, recalled how Beam personally worked to get him back on track when he was cutting class. Eventually, the coach helped Bhonapha secure a university scholarship and, later, his own first coaching gig.

“This is how his life ends? It’s a joke,” Bhonapha said Friday, struggling to hold back tears. “He spent his whole life trying to keep kids out of trouble.”

“Hopefully his legacy is still bigger than this tragic story,” he added, after gathering himself. “It’s going to live on through all of us — all the people he helped.”

Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].