At the end of every year, I drop a dented dipper into the river of life and look at the lives of 10 people from the Lansing area who died in the past year. They are not all famous or accomplished, but they are worth remembering.

FLOYD D. "BUBBY" EATON SR.

1930-2014

In the late 1950s, Floyd D. Eaton started work at Atlas Drop Forge, a pillar of mid- 20th-century Lansing industry and a quick walk from Eaton's downtown Lansing house. Two years later, both of his hands were crushed in a stamping press.

Eaton switched gears and went to work for Lansing's Sanitation Department, rising through the ranks from sanitation worker to supervisor. To liven up monotonous runs, workers stacked as many galvanized steel garbage cans as they could balance on their hips and carried them to the truck. He was so good at it he developed a passion for weightlifting that lasted the rest of his life.

At age 39, in 1968-69, he was named Mr. Michigan.

Eaton died Nov. 22 at 84.

"His laugh was infectious. People gravitated to him," Eaton's son, Mujahid Abdul Hameed, said. "He didn't know any strangers."

Born in Lansing, Eaton was an athlete from his swimming and diving days at West Junior High. He was a three-time wrestling champion at Sexton High and the only African- American on the wrestling team.

Hameed recalled that Sexton's head wrestling coach, Iggy Conrad, would tell him to lose a match, "depending on where they were playing," because the opponents wouldn't tolerate losing to an African-American wrestler. Eaton politely declined to take any dives.

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A cup from the river of life