TAYLOR COUNTY, GA - OBITS Beverly Griffith Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Harris Hill http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00011.html#0002514 Georgia Table of Contents: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm B. Griffith Film Veteran Dead at 82 Beverly Griffith, a Butler native, was an internationally known airline public relations man and a pioneer in movie and news photography, has died at new York University Medical Center. He was 82. Memorial services will be held at 2:30pm Monday at Campbell Funeral Chapel in New York City. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale will officiate. Burial will be in Butler, where his parents are buried. Griffith died Thursday on his 35th anniversary as an Eastern Air Lines public relations official. At one time directory of public relations for Eastern, he later was assistant vice president and then special assistant to the vice president of public relations. Before World War I when Mack Sennett was experimentning with film making, Griffith was his assistant and chose the world's first movie bathing beauties. He also took the wheel when the Keystone Kops needed a driver in their wild car chases. In 1917, Griffith followed Gen John "Black Jack" Pershing's American troops with a newsreel camera as they chased Poncho Villa away from the Texas border. In 1933, when Griffith was in China with Universal and Fox studios, he received the title of the "Leading Showman of the Orient" from the drama circle of the Shanghai Post. Among Griffith's achievements was a progrm he developed in the 1930s to allow quick delivery by air of human eyes for cornea transplants, making eye banks a real possibility. Griffith roomed with humorist Will Rogers when both lived in Japan and he numbered among his friend The Atlanta Constitution's later publisher Ralph McGill and Atlanta Mayor Emeritus William B. Harsfield. Married and divorced years ago and childless, Griffith lived alone in New York City at the time of his death. Surviving are two sister, Mrs. Mary Dobbs of Atlanta and Mrs. Walter Bedard of Jacksonville and a niece, Mrs. John O. Mitchell of Atlanta.