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Date: April 08, 2004 at 12:04:16
From: Keith Norrington, [66.83.131.6.nw.nuvox.net]
Subject: Re: Benton Roblee Duhme |
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Don: Thanks for sharing that wonderful tribute to Benton. I truly regret that our paths never crossed. However, I felt like I knew him inasmuch as Capt. Doc Hawley and Roddy Hammett spoke of him a lot and Ruth Ferris frequently wrote about him in her letters to me. She had taught many members of his family at The Community School in St. Louis, but retired in 1957 just before Benton got to the fifth grade. Nonetheless, he contracted the "steamboat bug" from seeing the salvaged pilothouse of the GOLDEN EAGLE on the school grounds and hearing Ruth's class talk about their field trips to the St. Louis levee and her lessons on river history. Then he started riding boats, taking pictures and collecting anything that remotely related to steamboating. It was said that his room was so full of riverboat memorabilia that he had to remove things from his bed at night! Benton was a frequent visitor to Ruth's steamboat museum aboard the BECKY THATCHER and contributed artifacts which he had rescued from the sunken RIVER QUEEN (former GORDON C. GREENE) in a very daring salvaging operation with a friend in a johnboat. Ruth wrote a tribute in The Waterways Journal at the time of Benton's passing that ended with, "the glow of his enthusiasm buoys the channel for those of us who still stand watch." Indeed, it's up to the rest of us to hang on (and NEVER let go!) to what we can of our steamboating heritage. Benton, Ruth, and so many other great river people who have made that final crossing, would expect nothing less of us.
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