Elizabeth Helen Morton Thurston Baratto Grant

1913 - 1984

Beth Thurston, pianist and organist, was associated with the Voice of Prophecy radio broadcast from 1950 to 1955. Prior to this appointment she had taught piano at Fresno Academy, served as a musician in evangelism, and then worked in the VOP Bible School, assisting in music as needed from 1947 to 1950.

When the VOP moved to new headquarters at a different location in Glendale, California, in 1950, she became the full-time organist, helping to satisfy the music needs of the broadcast, which in the new facility had a vastly expanded recording studio requiring increased keyboard playing.

With the new recording studio's professional level tape recorders and fidelity, high quality recordings of songs could be taped in Spanish, Portuguese, and eventually Japanese for use in programs for Central and South America and Japan. It was an intense schedule which, with the music needs posed by frequent travels and public appearances, created many demands. She continued with the VOP until 1955.

Beth was born in California, one of six children and the middle of three daughters of Fred R. and Cora Ethel Moon Morton. She married Donley S. Thurston and they worked together in evangelism through the mid-1940s. She later married Richard J. Baratto in 1961 and Bruce H. Grant in 1979.

The Grants were living in Burleson, Texas, when she died at age seventy. She is buried in Keene, Texas, where her grave marker states “Voice of Prophecy Alumnus.”

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Sources: Robert E. Edwards, Hello America!, VOP publication,1961, 48; Obituary for her mother, Cora Ethel Moon Morton, Pacific Union Recorder, 26 March 1962, 14; California Birth Index, Marriage Indices, and Social Security Death Index, Fresno, California, City Directories, 1938-40, Ancestory.com.