Benjamin Everett Grant

GRANT, MCCREIGHT, WALKER, WILLIAMSON, AUGUSTINE

Posted By: Katie Parker (email)
Date: 4/11/2009 at 15:13:45

Ben Grant who died this week was the last of Greenfield's locally famous barbershop quartet, who flourished a quarter of a century ago. Wherever they assembled it was natural for them to burst into song. The season of the year meant no difference whether indoors or on a street corner vocal harmony flowed out in "Sweet Adaline," "Workin' on the Railroad," "She Wore a Tulip," the "Iowa Corn Song" and others as equally familiar.

These bursts of harmony in the open sometimes startled visitors who were not familiar with the habits of the quartet. But if gave them something to remember the town by, not only in the harmony but in the pleasure the quartet got out of vocalizing.

Three of the quartet, M. G. McCreight, Jim Walker, Clarence Williamson preceded Ben on the great adventure.

Ben Grant was good for Greenfield in his active days. He backed projects for the good of the town. He was vitally interested in high school athletics. He was one of the committee who visited Mike Augustine picking corn at his mother's farm south of Orient, and persuaded Mike to become Greenfield high school coach.

He helped raise the money for the Greenfield community building, where basketball flourished before the present high school building was built. He backed the local teams year after year, rejoiced in their victories and sympathized in their defeats.

As county chairman of the Adair county Democrat party, he held the organization together during the lean years, championed the party's cause and never got much out of it for his work and time, except the satisfaction of supporting something he believed in. In his later years he held the state office of a food inspector, but that slipped out of his grasp when the administration changed. Such are the hazards of politics.

But Ben Grant had his place in this town. Old timers will remember him fondly. He was of that generation, whose number is fast diminishing.

Perhaps at this moment the streets of gold in some celestial realm resound to barbershop harmony as Ben joins the other members of the old quartet in a few familiar sections. —KHS