EATON A. BOOTHE, LTJG, USN

Eaton Boothe '22

Date of birth: July 15, 1900

Date of death: September 17, 1927

Age: 27

Lucky Bag

From the 1922 Lucky Bag:

EATON ALEXANDER BOOTHE

Newark, Ohio

"Boots"

EATON came into his own on his First Class Cruise to Norway. The concrete-mixer he met up with while in the Land of the Midnight Sun, though not exactly a Harrison Fisher product, made up for her other deficiencies by an excess of beef and brawn. Our hero tried to uphold the noblest traditions but the style of wrestling was new and he departed with several fractured ribs.

He has degenerated morally during the past summer due to the insidious influence of Ike Brown's company on various and sundry liberties in Lisbon. He goes on record as being the only man that can understand Ike's French as spoken with the Scotch accent. Possessed with the faculty of turning out on Monday morning with the firm conviction that the Universe is all wrong, he usually finds solace in singing the blues with "Nap" Higgins.

"Yes, Jawn, this is Monday all day. Gittem back, Plebes."

President Monorail Club.

EATON ALEXANDER BOOTHE

Newark, Ohio

"Boots"

EATON came into his own on his First Class Cruise to Norway. The concrete-mixer he met up with while in the Land of the Midnight Sun, though not exactly a Harrison Fisher product, made up for her other deficiencies by an excess of beef and brawn. Our hero tried to uphold the noblest traditions but the style of wrestling was new and he departed with several fractured ribs.

He has degenerated morally during the past summer due to the insidious influence of Ike Brown's company on various and sundry liberties in Lisbon. He goes on record as being the only man that can understand Ike's French as spoken with the Scotch accent. Possessed with the faculty of turning out on Monday morning with the firm conviction that the Universe is all wrong, he usually finds solace in singing the blues with "Nap" Higgins.

"Yes, Jawn, this is Monday all day. Gittem back, Plebes."

President Monorail Club.

Loss

Eaton was lost on September 17, 1927 when the airplane he was piloting crashed in the Mojave desert. The other two crewmen aboard were also lost. Eaton was "attached to staff of Rear Admiral Reeves at San Diego." They were on their way to Spokane, Washington, for the national air races.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Born in Pennsylvania, Eaton graduated from Newark High school in 1917.
Eaton married Marian Heitmuller on July 22, 1922, in New York City.
He was a member of the Masons, F. & A. M.
Eaton was engineer officer on the staff of Rear-Admiral J. M. Reeves, fleet air force commander.
On September 21, a joint funeral was held at the auditorium at the Naval Air Station, North Island. According to The Hanford Sentinel, California, September 19, 1927: Ashes of both Eaton and Kenneth McRae were scattered from a plane over the sea.
In 1910 in Norwalk, Ohio, Eaton’s father was a cordage (ropes) dealer in the oil fields; his mother was Lile. Eaton’s sister Georgia became Mrs. L. O. Hall. His brother Robert was 13 years older than Eaton. Born in Leadville, Colorado, in 1888, he became a civil engineer. He died in Phoenix in January, 1949, and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego.

He is buried in San Diego, California.

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together… or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.