At one time, Benton's folks were willing to donate his "stuff" to the Behringer-Crawford collection that Mickey Frye, the former Editor of the Steamboat Times, started, and now Virginia Bennett has added to, but for some reason it didn't happen. There was talk that John Hartford added some, or all, of Benton's treasures to his own "Great Big Collection of Steamboat Stuff". Now the question is: What happened to John's collection?
One of Benton's grandfathers started the Brown Shoe Company, and that where his middle name comes from. He told me that he had been left a trust, from his grandparents, that required him to find worthy causes, each year, and donate it. He was a very unpretentious guy, and, except for his nice clothes, no one would have ever realized he came from wealth. Incidentally, while sorting through my own "dusty boxes", found the menu from Antoine’s, in New Orleans, from the night Benton took my wife and I there before we drove him to the airport after the DQ was laid up in 1970.
Except for a very few of us who knew Benton, could today's steamboat fans realize the importance he played and the potential he possessed, during his short life, concerning steamboats. When Donald T. Wright, the great Editor of the Waterways Journal died, most of his steamboat collection went to Tulane University, but Benton also received a share. Had Benton still be living, he would, I am convinced, be a major player somewhere on the river, either on a steamboat, editing the WWJ, or as the curator of the greatest collection of steamboat stuff, ever.
|
|
