“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 616 (Monday)

While at Coggshall Park on Sunday, I noticed commemorative stone benches engraved with names and remembrances. There were several in a line on the way to the stairs leading to the trail around Mirror Lake and to the gazebo.

Who is this Carnival Queen?

Most of the messages engraved on the benches were the likes of “In memory of Meme and Pepe” with various family members named, but one bench was a bit different and has me intrigued. It says, “In Loving Memory of Ruth Ray Hession Fitchburg Carnival Queen 1936.” 

I need to know about this woman. I tried checking with my friends Google, Yahoo, ancestry-dot-com, and Newspapers-dot-com. An obituary for a woman of that name who was born in 1931 and died in 2009 was found and it’s possible she was the Carnival Queen in 1936, although she would have been but a wee girl of four or five.

The obituary didn’t mention the royal title or the carnival, even though the paper regularly carried stories about people recovering in the hospital from appendicitis and the news that Mrs. So-and-so just returned from visiting friends in a neighboring town. One would think a royal coronation would be newsworthy.

But I need to know. Which Carnival? How old (or young) was the Carnival Queen? What did she wear? Was she given a tiara? How was she chosen? Is she connected to Mummu's lifelong friend who was named Hession? Was Carnival Queen her greatest accomplishment, or just the one most interesting to the average Fitchburger? That one bench has birthed so many questions.