BURTON TOWNSHIP, Ohio — They are the only house on the northern stretch of Osmond Road.
Now, the Beck family hopes Geauga County Commissioners will vote in favor of renaming a small 1/10th of a mile dead-end stretch of Osmond Road just north of Butternut Road — to Levi Lane.
"What are ways I can have Levi's name survive and be said as frequently and as regularly as often," Father Geoffrey Beck told News 5. "And I was pulling into our street one day and I was looking up at the sign up there, wondering if you could name a street after him like our street?"
Two-year-old Levi Beck died March 5, 2025, from SUDC, known as Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood.
The rare category of death involves one out of every 100,000 children. While Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, applies to children under 1 year old, SUDC involves children between the ages of 1 and 18.
"To find out your child died with no causes, from a full autopsy pathology report reviewed, they found nothing wrong with him," Beck said. "I had heard of SIDS; I had never heard of SUDC."
The proposed road renaming involves a small stretch of Osmond Road just north of the Butternut Road intersection, where the Beck family home is the only address that would be impacted.
Geoffrey Beck told News 5 the goal of the road renaming is to keep their son's name around and to raise awareness of SUDC in the community.
"When you lose a child, we still say his name a lot, but not nearly as much as we did," he explained. "And you can imagine that people outside our family say his name at all. Every person we can make aware of this — that understands SUDC is a real thing and a real concern with parents, there are issues similar to SIDS after you're one year old — I don't want any parent or family to ever have to go through this again. Neither does my wife. This is the worst thing a parent could have to deal with."
At a recent Geauga County Commissioners meeting Tuesday, some in the community expressed concerns over the work it would take and the precedent it could set.
"As a township, we are not in favor of changing this name," Burton Township Trustee Ken Burnett said. "We have to be very careful that we don't set a precedent. They're very nice people but I don't believe there's a benefit to Burton Township."
Jason Sutter, who manages the Burton Township Service Department and is also a Huntsburg Trustee, said it would cost the township about $300 to install and replace any signs.
"No offense to the Becks or anyone in this room who had had losses, but I don't think this is a proper use of tax dollars," Sutter said.
Both Beck and Geauga County Commissioner Carolyn Brakey volunteered to cover the cost to Burton Township to change or add any road signs.
"Changing the road name, especially not the whole road name would be disruptive for our emergency responses," Geauga County Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand said.
Geauga County Engineer Andy Haupt said the process is more complicated than it appears, involving updating all sorts of maps and records.
"There are so many other things behind the scenes that nobody really sees – oh just change your address – it's not that easy," Haupt said.
For Geauga County Commissioner Carolyn Brakey, it's unusual for the county to change an existing road name, but that doesn't mean it should never happen.
"This is such a particular situation, a unique situation — this is one section of a road with one house on it and that house is the Beck family that wants this change to happen," Brakey said. "Government exists to serve the people and it doesn't exist so we can have less work for ourselves. A lot of the pushback was concern about having less work either for politicians with future requests or bureaucrats right now, and that is something I don't have a lot of sympathy for. I have sympathy for the Beck family who lost their beautiful little boy Levi."
Geauga County commissioners are set to vote on the proposed road name change next week.
Clay LePard is the Ashtabula, Geauga and Portage counties reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on X @ClayLePard, on Facebook ClayLePardTV or email him at Clay.LePard@wews.com.
