Port remembers two identities, one unique person

NEWBURYPORT — Many people in Newburyport knew who Fran Dalton was, but not so many actually knew her.

A central figure in the local arts community for many years who went through a very public sex change in her 50s, Dalton died Saturday at Sea View Retreat in Rowley. She was 81.

She spent most of her life as Frank Dalton, a tall, lean man with craggy features, a deep voice and long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail.

He worked as a freelance photographer, specializing in Newburyport scenes.

Dalton was believed to have been a native of Lawrence. As Frank, he served in the Army and later received veteran's benefits.

Bill Lane was the award-winning staff photographer at The Daily News when Frank Dalton arrived in Newburyport in the mid- to late 1960s.

"He lived on a boat at Charley Powers' boatyard, which is now Windward Yacht Yard," Lane recalled.

As Newburyport went through its landmark architectural renaissance in the 1970s, it was also the scene of considerable cultural ferment.

The Clipper City's artists, writers, musicians and theater people took a variety of jobs to pay the rent while they pursued their visions, and then-writer Bill Chase, now of Rockport, remembers Frank Dalton working as a custodian at the former Daley's restaurant at the corner of Pleasant Street and Hale's Court.

Photographer Dalton and writer Connie Van Swearingen — known to all as Connie Van Ess — were constant companions in those days. Chase remembers Dalton had a pet name for Van Ess; he called her "Molly Malone."

Dalton and Van Ess were right in the thick of the Newburyport arts and theater scene, according to Kathleen Isbell, who was a founder and longtime principal of The Theater of Newburyport in the late 1970s and into the '80s.

Isbell remembers Dalton as a talented photographer of extraordinary vision.

"His photos used to blow me away," she said. "I used to ask him, 'How do you get through the day?' He was so sensitive. What he saw could crack open your head and your heart."

The couple were also immersed in Newburyport's thriving counterculture, which celebrated individualism, diversity and even eccentricity.

Dalton's eccentricity was his taste in cars. For years he drove a '68 Chevy Malibu convertible, white with garish black and yellow stripes.

When a colorful and usually inebriated Newburyport street person named Duncan Chase died at 60 in a Boston hospital in 1980, Dalton spearheaded a drive to collect money to bring his remains back for burial at Old Hill Burying Ground and pay for a headstone adorned with Chase's trademark phrase — "I'm a cool, cool cat."

Changes

When Van Swearingen died in September 1985 at 55, things changed for Dalton.

"He started wearing her scarves, which we all thought was all right. Then he started wearing her jewelry," Isbell recalls. "Then it was makeup. I remember pulling him aside and saying, 'Listen, we've got to show you how to apply makeup.' We all thought, 'Oh my God, Frank's turning into Connie.'"

But he wasn't.

"It was that he always felt that there was a woman inside him," Isbell said.

Frank's transition into Fran took place in front of friends and neighbors, as unobstrusively as possible, but also unapologetically.

"He didn't leave town," Isbell said. "He did it here, and people just accepted it, not just the artists, but the old-time townies."

Fran Dalton didn't practice photography as much as Frank had. Instead, she wrote the occasional poem, usually to give to friends.

Roseann Robillard has been director of the Newburyport Council on Aging for 18 years and has always known Dalton as a woman.

Dalton had been a regular visitor to the Council on Aging in The Salvation Army building on Water Street, Robillard said.

Dalton contributed a poem to the council's newsletter and participated in senior activities. She said her files contain "many very, very gracious notes of appreciation" from Dalton.

Dalton befriended some of the homeless people who frequent The Salvation Army.

"She often would enjoy a free community meal with them," Robillard said.

Dalton maintained her sense of humor and wasn't afraid to voice her opinion, both qualities that were sometimes displayed by writing letters to the editor of The Daily News.

One such letter appeared in April 2009. Dalton defended the 292-foot wind turbine erected by Mark Richey Woodworking on Parker Street and dismissed the objections of neighbors as "an exercise in mass hysteria."

She nicknamed the wind turbine "Freddy" and concluded her letter with a poem she called "Ode to Freddy."

Frank Dalton was a smoker and so was Fran Dalton. Her addiction to nicotine remained strong, even as the price of cigarettes climbed and outstripped her meager veteran's pension.

She got into a dispute last year with the state Department of Revenue, which wanted to collect taxes on some discount cigarettes she had bought by mail order from a New York State Native American company. The conflict ended up on the pages of the Boston Globe, where columnist Kevin Cullen scolded state revenue officials for browbeating her over the $91 they claimed she owed.

Cullen described Dalton as "80 years old, and if she makes 81, she'll be lucky. She is badly stooped and uses something she fashioned out of a tree branch as a cane. She used to weigh 160 pounds, but is now a wispy 115. She has a bad heart and every imaginable ailment known to octogenarians."

As her health continued to decline, she started making plans for the end, Robillard said.

"She had things like woodworking tools and artworks, and she was giving them away," Robillard said.

Robillard visited Dalton at Sea View last week, when she was clearly dying.

Dalton gave her envelopes to give to five people.

One of the envelopes was addressed to Jack Flanagan of Salisbury, who said he had known Dalton as both Frank and Fran for about 30 years and who used to drive Fran "all over the place" when she could no longer operate a car.

What was in the envelope?

A note. "He wanted to thank me for being his friend," Flanagan said.

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