Roy speaking at the 1963 Newton Family Reunion

Chrismas Card Photographs: These are almost letter sized pages of several photographs with descriptions that were sent out at christmas. The negatives of these where found at the home of James Covington after his passing, and were scanned at 200dpi as jpegs.

• 1960 (523K)
• 1955 (447K)
• 1954 (494K)
• 1952 (221K)

Family Pictures:

• 1930's
• 1940's
• 1950's
• 1960's

The family home was originally addressed at 138 Rust Avenue. Sometime after the 1950s the city renumbered the street and the house became 208 Rust. Ther was a J. C. Penney store about three blocks east of the house, in the Big Rapids downtown area, where most clothes and sundaries were purchased.

Margaret aka Grandma Crammond wouldn't play cards, but she like playing dominoes. The score after each play is the total of all the open ends on the board, if it's a multiple of 5. "Counters" were dominoes that had a difference of 5 between the 2 ends (e.g., 2 and 7, or double 5), because they would let you score if the person who played before you scored; you were lucky to draw them. In this picture, Dorothy keeps score on a small pad, David concentrates on the game, Jim observes, and Grandma smiles.

1965 Dorothy watching TV while knitting, a sweater she knitted is on the back of the couch. She said that she had to modify the knitting patterns she used to account for her longer stitches, which she attributed to knotting while reclining.

Mackinac Island 29 June 1965 Dorothy and David and then David, Roy, and Glen.

A picnic with Glen, Roy, and David (left to right) in the spring of 1959. Roy was 55, Dave around 22, and Glen around 12. That woven picnic basket got a lot of use. On the ground you can see a thermos of coffee and couple of bottles of Royal Crown soda, along with plates, cups and forks. Dave is holding a bottle of Barclay's. Perhaps Blended Scotch Whiskey? Roy drank whiskey in the evening sometimes, so this might be his bottle.

David giving rides on his boat down the Muskegon River. Top picture: David Newton, Tony Wood, Tom Avey. Bottom picture: Glen, Dorothy, Tom, Tony, and Gordy Brown.

On the book shelf: Black Beauty, the 1877 novel famous for inspiring several movie versions, Cass Timberlane, a 1945 novel by Sinclair Lewis, also made into a movie, and The Signpost, a 1943 novel by E. Arnot Robinson. Dorothy made the ceramic candle holder at the top of the book shelf; it's finger loop visable on it's right side. On the left is the snuffer on a post. On the lower shelf of the table, her knitting needles and Popular Ceramics magazine. She probably also made the statue of an angel with pig tales singing from a song sheet.

As it was every year, this is a live Christmas tree. The tree decorations include tinsel icicles, which Dorothy coached the kids to hang artistically in small groups. When DAVID got older, he enjoyed tossing two or three bunches of icicles over his shoulder to land on the tree. That made everyone laugh.

The lamp behind Jim lasted another 13 years or more, until Glen lost his balance while getting up and knocked over the lamp, which had been moved from behind the chair.

Christmas protocol was to open one present at a time, giving everyone a chance to see every present and giving the recipient a chance to briefly enjoy the present and thank the giver before the next person unwrapped one. Some of the presents had tags identifying "Mom and Dad" as the givers. Others had tags saying the present was from Santa Claus, Frosty the snowman, Rudolph the reindeer, etc, but the boys knew those characters were not real.

In later years, there was a wallet that Roy gave to David, and then David gave it back to Roy the next year, and so on. One Christmas when SANDY joined the family, she gave Glen a wallet, not knowing about the humorous tradition between Roy and Dave. She was a little embarrassed when Roy (or was it Dave that year?) opened his present.

David, Dorothy and Roy around the kitchen table at 208 Rust Avenue in Big Rapids. Picture taken by Glen. The windows looked out onto the driveway between their house and the Browns’ house next door. The sink is at the right, behind Dorothy. The stove is behind Roy. From the position where the picture was taken, Glen could put out his left hand and touch the Kelvinator. (Refrigerator.)

Dorothy and David are drinking milk, while Roy drinks water. The milk came from Emmons Dairy. For a while, David had a milk route for Emmons Dairy. This was non-homogenized milk, although homogenized milk first appeared at the turn of the 20th century.

The milk man would deliver milk to our front porch in glass bottles, and in the winter when it was very cold, sometimes the liquid in the bottle would freeze and expand, and the cream at the top would push the cardboard bottle top up as much as an inch. There was another wrapping around the top of the bottle, sort of like Saran Wrap, down to the neck, which still protected the cream from exposure to bugs.

Before the next milk delivery, the empties would be put out, along with tickets for the number of bottles wanted.

The Gravesite at Highlandview Cemetery in Big Rapids: James (Jim) in the foreground, Roy and Dorothy in the center, and Roy Jr. (who was stillborn) in the back. Because Jim was cremated, the stone was able to be placed on the same plot as his parents.

From Glen Newton:

...from the Big Rapids, Michigan, daily newspaper, The Pioneer. "The anthem, "I Knew Thee Not," to be sung by United Church's chancel choir at the 11 o'clock service Sunday morning, is the result of an unusual collaboration by three member of a creative church family. The words of the anthem, being sung publicly for the first time, are by Roy Newton, and the music is composed by his son Glen, who is a senior in Big Rapids high school. Their wife and mother Dorothy, who is church organist and directs the chancel choir, made up three pages of stencils so that the music might be duplicated for the singers' use."

The lyrics are a poem that Dad wrote around 1924. The quote at the top of the page is from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

It’s in “Verse and Worse: The Collected Poems of Roy Newton”.

It’s one of two of Dad’s poems that I set to music. The other is “I Bet the Fish is Bitin’ Good Today,” which seemed inappropriate for a church anthem.

The handwriting on the manuscript of the music is Mom’s. She started with my finished draft and copied it neatly onto the Ditto master stencils ^{^}, then ran off enough copies for the Chancel Choir members.

Because of the somber tone of Dad’s poem, my first draft of music began with a vocal solo in a minor key. It seemed too gloomy, so I replaced that setting with the introduction and verse in C major that you see here. The second verse in the attached music is in C minor, transitioning to Eb major, the same as in my first draft. My only contribution to the lyrics is the “Amen.”

From Glen Newton:

Among the papers I filed this weekend [January 3, 1998], I found my Grandfather Crammond's scrapbook for years starting in 1899, when he was a music student. One of the interesting clippings in it was from the Newton, Iowa, newspaper, dated January 20, 1909. He had written at the top: "Dorothy's age 3 yrs 4 months". (Mom was born September 22, 1905, in Newton, Iowa.)
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INFORMAL RECEPTION
Rev. O. F. Weaver and Mrs. Weaver are Given a Warm Welcome by Their Church People

Those who gathered at the Lutheran church last evening for the reception which was given for the pastor, O. F. Weaver and Mrs. Weaver were delighted with the pleasant happy affair and enjoyed the musical program which was exceptionally pleasing.

The music for the evening was furnished by the Davis Orchestra composed of George Sells Davis and his daughters, Marie and Helen, a flute solo by Mr. Davis, piano duet by Prof. C. C. Crammond and Ralph Moore and vocal solos by Miss Lillian Jasper and Dorothy Crammond.

The orchestra numbers were most pleasing. Miss Jasper sang a pretty song and responded to an encore. It is needless to say that the flute solo by Mr. Davis was enjoyed. The piano duet by Prof. Crammond and Ralph Moore was another pleasing number but the star of the evening was little Dorothy Crammond who has a beautiful voice and with her father as accompanist sang sweetly one verse of her song. Everyone was pleased and cheered for the tiny girl. This frightened her so that it was just a little hard for her to sing the second verse but she did so, and was cheered again.

See also:

• http://www.bethanyenglish.org/newhistory.htm Reverend Weaver went on later that same year (1909) to become the 5th pastor of the Bethany English Lutheran Church in Cleveland Ohio.+

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