Hubert Eaton

* I really appreciate your mini-biography about Hubert Eaton, the founder of Forest Lawn Memorial Park (April 16). I especially liked “but it didn’t stop him from sponsoring a writing award program through local universities.”

I was one of the competitors and I won first prize, $1,075.00, and my school--Pepperdine--got $5,000. This was in early summer 1949, the first year of the competition.

Within a matter of weeks I used the money to buy a house, a refrigerator and a stove, and still had some of it left. Oh, incidentally, I got married too, and Sylvia and I recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. The home we now reside in is worth many times the amount Dr. Eaton endowed us with, and we remain grateful to him for what he did for us.

ROBERT O. YOUNG

West Covina