Dr. Lonnie C. Carton
Dr. Lonnie C. Carton, age 95, educator, broadcaster, mother and grandmother extraordinaire passed away peacefully on Sunday April 7, 2024 surrounded by her children at Maravilla Assisted Living in Austin, Texas. The beloved matriarch of a large family, she was also widely recognized as a gifted communicator whose common sense approach to parenting and child development informed and inspired the thousands of dedicated listeners to her nationally syndicated radio program Dr. Lonnie Carton in The Learning Center.
Winner of The National Media Award of The American Psychological Association for “the best radio program in the country exploring the what, where and how of human behavior”, The Learning Center offered problem-solving strategies for parents, families and educators. Dr. Carton’s broadcasts, taped in Boston at WEEI news radio in the early 1970’s and later at WBZ, aired nationwide six days a week for more than two decades.
Lonnie grew up in Baltimore, Maryland in a multigenerational home, the only child of a single mother living with family members who had little opportunity for formal education. At a young age, she became a keen observer of the intricacies of human relations and how familiy members relate to each other. A bookworm, tennis player, and talented student, Lonnie was one of a dozen young women in 1946 selected to attend then all-male Johns Hopkins University in a World War Two-era pilot program. University administrators discontinued the “experiment” in less than a year and pressured all the women students to transfer, but Lonnie insisted she belonged, graduated in three years, and went on to get her M.Ed from the University of Maryland in child psychology and her PH.D from Penn State University.
Hopkins didn’t admit another woman for 24 years, but there, in the mid-1940s, Lonnie met the love of her life, Edwin B. Carton. They married in 1949, raised three children well, and helped raise seven beloved grandchildren before Ed’s death in 2012. Like the Biblical Abraham and Sarah’s open tent, their home on Sheffield Road in Newton was open to all who cared to enter—whether it was for some of Lonnie’s quick wit and sage advice, a political discussion with Ed, a game of Boggle, or just laughter and storytelling around the kitchen table with family and friends.
A professor of education at Tufts University for fourteen years and the author of Raise Your Kids Right (Putnam), later released in paperback as No Is A Love Word, Dr. Carton also put her passion for people and her community-building skills to work at Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston, where she developed several innovative support services for inner city kids and their parents. When she wasn’t teaching or on the lecture circuit, she could often be found at the movies with her husband, sharing a Cabot’s ice cream Brazilian Combo, or at Gillette Stadium cheering on her beloved New England Patriots.
On learning of Lonnie’s passing, one of her cousins wrote that “she has been the rock of our family in so many ways—a mountain of integrity, common sense, intelligence, and love.”
Lonnie leaves behind her children, Evan Carton and Janis Bergman-Carton. Debbie and Yossie Riemer, and Paula Carton; her grandchildren, Jacqueline and Jonathan Tame, Nili Riemer Bueckert and Benni Bueckert, Yair and Jennie Riemer, Rebecca Carton and Daniel Dowd, Yoni and Lexi Riemer, Noah Carton, and Hannah Rossen; and eight great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held at 11:00 am on Thursday, April 11 at Temple Beth Elohim, 10 Bethel Road, in Wellesley.
In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory can be made to The Children’s Defense Fund