Obituary for Afton Haggett | Strong-Hancock Funeral Home
- Date Of Birth: May 22, 1918
- Date Of Death: July 22, 2013
- State: Maine
Her middle name was Eloise, which may have been a portent of things to come. The framing names were Afton and Bates. She had – in the course of a blessedly long life – a number of names. She was Mrs. Witham for a time; later she became Mrs. Haggett. To friends she was always Affie and, since she became a grandmother, many know her only as Graffie. There was also a time when she went by the name of “Snara”, which we often heard when we were children. Afton Eloise and her best friend Lucille McCutcheon Merrifield would seem by all accounts to have been high-spirited and somewhat impertinent. For a time they were banned from Murray Center’s department store because of some kind of mischief. It was also said that they deliberately contrived to attract the attention of a young Congregational minister who moved into the parsonage across the street from the Bates house. In 1937 she married the Rev. Cecil L. Witham and proceeded to have four children. Afton was also intensely involved in Cecil’s church. Among other things she organized and led a youth choir with students from Lincoln Academy, many of whom became life-long friends. Their work at the church and their special interest in young people found practical expression in trips with the choir kids to Cecil’s family’s island at the outer edge of Penobscot Bay. They also took a longer trip, this time to Europe, from which Cecil returned a sick man. He never really recovered and died of a heart attack at a church convention in Los Angeles while Afton and the children were at her brother Arthur’s in San Diego. Afton first went to Los Angeles and then returned to tell us that Cecil had died – in the 15th year of their marriage. From the outset – during the trip back to Maine, during the last summer in the parsonage, during the move to Cross Street – she carried her grief deep within. She didn’t cry, she didn’t weaken; she remained what she had always been — a deeply religious, disciplined and caring woman. It was a special gift that she had the love and support of her own family and that of Cecil’s. She received aid for dependent children but began immediately to fashion a new life.