Wax Museum

There's a teacher in my school that does a "Wax Museum" every year with his students. This entails portraits of famous historical people and their dates of birth and death. The students then stand in front of the portraits and do presentations...I won't give any more away. Anyhow, picture this layout in your brain before I continue this story:

Painting of the person

then

Dates of life, for example 1888-1925

I was walking a second-grade student back to his classroom. He tried to stretch out some names of the historical figures and even read some of the date numbers, but couldn't seem to put the concepts together. Finally, he asked what the numbers meant. I told him, and he said,

"Oh, really? I thought those were their phone numbers!"

My reply: "Those people are dead. How would you call them?"

Ah, the mind of a kid: "I don't know how, but I'm just sure you can."

Well...