Local Boy Dies as Result of Plunge from Cliff In Vermont
Denton Wiss Taylor, nineteen-year-old son of Dr. and Mrs. William Denton Taylor of Farley road, Short Hills, died Monday in Burlington, Vt., from injuries received in a hundred-foot fall from a rocky cliff near the summit of Camel's Hump, Vermont's second highest mountain. He was about to complete his freshman year at Dartmouth College.
With five other students he spent Saturday night at the home of Professor W. F. Munroe at North Duxbury, at the base of the mountain. The party started the climb Sunday morning and while rounding the nose of the peak Denton became dizzy and toppled off.
Working in two shifts, his companions labored three hours to get him to the base of the peak. Dr. H. D. Hopkins of Waterbury found him to be suffering from multiple injuries and rushed him to Burlington. He did not regain consciousness. Doctors said he would have been totally blind if he had lived.
Well known in the community and one of the most popular students in last year's graduating class at the local high school, Denton was an honor student, a member of the Dramatic Club, sang in the Glee Club and was on the soccer team. He also was manager of the year book. R. John Bretnall, principal, said the school had received excellent reports of his progress at Dartmouth.
His mother, who before her marriage was Miss Florence Wiss of Newark, is a member of the Board of Education and prominent in activities of the Women's Club. Dr. Taylor is a Newark dentist.
Besides his parents the youth is survived by two brothers, Frederick, a junior in Millburn High, and William, a pupil in the elementary schools.
The death of Denton Taylor on Monday, as a result of a fall while mountain-climbing in Vermont, is one of those tragedies which have always led men to raise agonized and unanswerable questions about the way of providence.
The passing of the aged may cause grief, and leave vacant places in family and business circles which take long to fill, yet at worst there is a sort of fitness about such a death–such fitness as that of the reaper's work when the harvest is ripe. The toll which death takes in times of war and other major catastrophes has a tragic aspect of its own, yet it is not un expected and we may think that in some degree we understand its place in the larger scheme of things. The accidental death of a youth of exceptional promise, on the other hand, seems to have no intelligible meaning. It strikes us as a terrible mistake–a slip in the workings of destiny which can yield no good to compensate for the resulting grief and loss.
And yet those who have suffered most keenly from such losses have seldom been able to rest in the conclusion that they were wholly cruel, unnecessary, meaningless. One of both of two convictions have usually brought comfort–the conviction that death is not an end but only a change, and the conviction that a life span which has been short may yet be richly complete. Certainly no one who knew Denton Taylor well will think that he lived in vain, and for those who were closest to him it will doubtless be impossible to believe that life has really ended for him.
The annual edition of the Millwheel, high school year book, has been dedicated to Denton Wiss Taylor, editor of the 1932 Millwheel, "in appreciation of his loyal comradeship, earnest service and high purpose." Denton, son of Dr. and Mrs. William Denton Taylor of Farley road, Short Hills, was killed May 8 in a fall from a Vermont cliff. He was about to complete his freshman year at Dartmouth.