Hal Brewster Horton

Hal Brewster Horton, 90, Cedar Key, died peacefully Friday May 27th 2011, at 811 2nd Street. He smiled after a light joke, and went back to sleep. Hal moved to Cedar Key in late April. His last days were where he wanted to be.

Hal was born July 7th 1920 in Highland Park Michigan (an enclave within Detroit), of Allen A Horton and Kathleen Brashill. Siblings were Henri (1908-1996), Barbara Kathleen (1910-1987), and Hugh Allen (1914-2010). Allen was a prolific inventor---Henry Ford`s X engine, Burrough`s portable, mechanical adding machines for retail businesses, motorcycles and large power yachts, too, and I think it inconceivable he didn`t first sketch the family`s Albert Kahn designed home built on a farm outside Plymouth, Michigan.

Hal attended a one-room school. His milieu was a working farm with horses and those for riding, draft, carriage, sulky, and sleigh. Hal`s dad`s full time machinist and machinists` draftsman came and went with drawings, models and prototypes.

His father died when Hal was ten. His siblings directed him to fine arts, music, the outdoors of camping, fishing and hunting, and smoking---he quit in his 50s saying forty years was enough. He graduated from Plymouth High School.

Clara Lemina Rader and Hal eloped in Detroit in 1940. He was a Ford Rouge tour guide. In 1941 he was drafted into the Navy and Seabees. Their son Hugh Brewster was born November 29th, 1942. With the GI Bill Hal studied photography. In most of his thirty four years in the art he was a commercial photographer. Along with hunting and fishing, he continued with competitive handgun marksmanship and reloading, and was the fireworks` director in their community west of Ann Arbor. In the 1950s he built three small plywood boats, and later, when Clara was wintering with her parents, he built a strip canoe in their dining room.

Clara, creative and softly intense, died in 1982.

He moved to a cottage on Mud Lake in Brooklyn, Michigan, keeping the wooded lot completely natural. His interest in hunting waned as environmental concerns grew. He retired to reading, fishing, wood carving, and "snapshot" photography. He sold carvings of birds in Michigan and Cedar Key. For a family reunion in his early 80s he solo tent camped from his Ford Escort to Oregon and back by way of the Southwest. Following Clara`s broad interests, it seems, he later had became devoted to the Detroit Tigers baseball team, which carried him into May this year.

His cats of eighteen years survive him---Bonnie and Max were named for a favorite aunt and uncle. He lived frugally, but supported many wildlife and environmental organizations, including the Humane Society. In the choice, "Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?" he took, as his oldest brother Henri had, full life and skimped purse.

Hal was the picture of equanimity, every glass half full, leaving people around him smiling, and inspired by his demeanor and open laughter. He said his longevity came from "clean living, garlic, and scotch."

Hal leaves his son and friend Hugh Horton of Cedar Key and Hugh`s wife Kayann. He leaves grandson H. Huff Horton born in 1962 and married to Sue, of Albuquerque New Mexico; Grandson Bard Brewster Horton born in 1963 and married to Jessica, of Seattle Washington; Grandson Dural Brewster Horton born in 1965, married to Elizabeth of Denver Colorado. He leaves great grandchildren Zach Brewster Horton born 1994 in Seattle; great granddaughter Hannah Rachel Horton born in 1996 in Seattle; great granddaughter Cassandra Aileen Horton born 1998 in Denver; and great grandson Bryce Brewster Horton born 2001 in Denver. He leaves two nephews and three nieces, seven great nieces and five great nephews, and several great great nieces and nephews.