The first bishop to be chosen from the Province of St. Albert the Great, he was born in South Boston, Massachusetts, on October 12, 1913. He received his early education in St. Francis de Sales school, Boston College High and Boston College. He entered the Order at St. Rose Priory, Springfield, Kentucky, and there made profession on August 16, 1937. He made his philosophical studies in the Dominican House of Studies, River Forest, Illinois, and in 1940 was one of four students sent to Washington for his first year of theological studies. He completed them in River Forest and was there ordained on June 6, 1943.

His first assignment was to Fenwick High School, Oak Park, Ill., where he taught until early 1951 when he became one of the first three members of St. Albert's Province to be sent to its first foreign mission - Lagos in Nigeria, West Africa. While exercising his ministry as a member of the community of St. Dominic's at Yaba in Lagos, he became Director of The Thomistic Institute Chairman of the Radio Committee of the Archdiocese of Lagos and conducted numerous retreats for priests and religious in Nigeria.

When the Prefecture of Sokoto, Nigeria, was established, Father Lawton was appointed the first Prefect Apostolic, January 15, 1954. He resided in Gusau the only residence for missionaries in the 46,000 square miles of the Prefecture whose 1,200 Catholics were scattered among five million inhabitants the vast majority of whom were Muslims. He carried on his arduous apostolate with one priest of the Society of African Missions until the arrival in 1956 of brethren from St. Albert's Province and of Dominican Sisters from Great Bend, Kansas.

Although he had several heart attacks in 1963, he had made satisfactory recovery and was consecrated first Bishop of Sokoto, August 15, 1964. As a simple priest he often ministered to his flock which had in ten years come to number more than 10,000. He was assisted by fourteen of his Dominican brethren, nine Dominican Sisters, and several lay

missionaries. Despite his episcopal dignity and hi incessant labors and fatiguing journey, he was faithful to the practices of the common life of his brethren, choral celebration of the Divine Office with conventual Mass, daily meditation, and recitation of the Rosary in common. He died suddenly on December 19, 1966 of a coronary thrombosis while en route in an auto from Sokoto to Gusau a few moments after completing the recitation of the Rosary with the driver Brother Thomas Martin, as was customary "for a safe journey." Following a concelebrated Pontifical Requiem Mass in Our Lady of Fatima Church, Gusau, the body of the Bishop was laid to rest in the Dominican plot of the cemetery adjacent to the Church.