Kenneth Beaton
Kenneth Beaton (CGS’61) of Carson City, Nev., writes that his father was eight and a half years old on the day in 1924 when his youngest brother was born and died. His father’s mom died two days later. “In 2003, I spent a day at the Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics, which contains birth, marriage, and death records—it’s the place where they hatch, match, and dispatch you,” Kenneth writes. “My uncle’s birth and death certificates recorded his name as ‘Male’ Beaton. ‘Male’ was placed in his mother’s arms in her casket and buried at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Lynn, Mass. My cousin Anne Marie Beaton Griffin and I believe everyone deserves a given name. We hired a stone carver to add ‘Ernest Cole Beaton, Newborn, July XX, 1924’ to our family’s grave marker. I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching and writing a confabulation weaving my family’s history with the story of Lynn’s 1941 New England championship high school football game at Manning Bowl and world events to give my uncle a life of 89 years he could have experienced.”
From the Fall 2019 issue.