Tom Benner was a writer and political activist born in Ravenna, Ohio in 1944. He died in Gainesville Florida in June 2000. He attended Kent State University where he was heavily involved in student activism. He was off-campus doing his laundry on the day of the iconic May 4th shootings. He always said that it was typical of his life that on its most exciting day, he was somewhere else. He participated in the Great Peace March in the late 80s, and when the march was over he settled in Gainesville. He said “I love the feistiness and complexity of Florida culture (Earth Day one weekend, Nazis the next.)”
Tom spent most of his life working on a long and complex novel series — a generation novel of a family of socialists deeply involved in all of the decades of political turmoil aided by their relationships with the Gods. Tom always wanted to sell his writing as political non-fiction. In the year leading up to the 15th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, he submitted his memories of the day to all of the leading progressive magazines. His query letter described it as the inside memories of a student leader in the protests, and he received numerous positive responses. When they read the article, full of what Thor had thought of the protests and how Athena advised them to handle events, those positive responses turned into no’s. Tom didn’t want to sell it as fiction and he didn’t want to write it without the gods. He insisted that publication in a pagan magazine wouldn’t mean as much to him as a political magazine. Like being at the laundromat the day his protests went into history, his writing often missed the obvious connections.
I met Tom in the 80s when we were in the same writing group in Ohio. I didn’t take to him at first. His conversations were prone to non-sequiters and he seemed to delight in doing everything the hard way. He perpetually fell in love with straight men and ignored suitable gay men who might have returned his feelings. He would refuse to standardize spelling or grammar in his writing because he was layering so many meanings on the words — “Don’t you see that it’s a pun in Latin?” I was taken aback when he declared me an incarnation of the goddess and his new muse.
It was when we corresponded during the Peace March that I began to appreciate him. His letters were filled with wit and kindness. He was the first Pagan I had met, the first vegetarian, the first political activist, the first serious writer. As the years went on, I realized how much of my life he influenced. I call him my godfather for that reason. He was my spiritual parent in so many ways, and I wouldn’t be the person I am if I hadn’t known him. His love for me was unconditional. He had no expectations for me, he wanted nothing from me, he only wanted me to be me.
Tom deliberately avoided any career success outside of writing. He thought having a solid job would hurt his ambition and he did not want to pay taxes to a government he didn’t support. He had a stroke in the mid 90s, and spent the rest of his life in a nursing home. He told me he saw it as a blessing because he could write all the time without worrying about food or shelter, but it seemed to me that a spark went out of him after that. He never finished any of the novels, although he worked on the ever growing novel cycle endlessly.
When he died, his writings were supposed to be sent to me as his literary executor. The box never arrived. I’ve got some snippets of things, letters, poems, one story we collaborated on. I have this hope that somehow, the box still exists somewhere and I’ll be able to find it some day. It hurts too much to think that everything he worked on is gone and his characters and stories are all in the trash. I know it must happen every day, people on the outskirts with that kind of crazy brilliance, people who can’t get taken seriously (or won’t, as I often thought Tom deliberately pushed any hope of success away) and their work gets thrown away because it’s just a bunch of paper from that crazy guy.
This web page is intended to keep the promise I made to him the take care of his writing after he died. I can’t publish what’s gone, but I can share what I have of his.
I, too, knew Tom Benner. I met him in Gainesville, FL when we worked in a restaurant together in the late 1980s. I was very young, a stupid teenager. He took me under his intellectual wing and guided and influenced me in so many ways, and I am forever grateful to him. I discovered a whole world of literature, music, film, poetry, art, and philosophy that all may never have occurred to me otherwise. Our friendship was very complex, and became ever more difficult when, just as you have indicated, he began to fall for and express feelings towards me that I could return. For one thing, I am straight. For another, he was nearly thirty years my senior. (cont’d.)
But we remained friends anyway. We hung out, went to movies, the library, out to eat, went to the Hippodrome theater, the Hardback Cafe, etc.. As I’ve said, I learned a whole world of things from him that no college tuition could buy. He also influenced my thinking as a young man, and got me involved in peace activism and made me aware of so many great organizations. He told me stories of the Vietnam era, of Kent State, of the Great Peace March in 1986. I was often the first to see or read his poems, his stories, etc. (he even briefly flirted with playwriting, even writing a part just for me). I LOVED the man, even though he was a bit odd. The most interesting people always are, however. We were friends for years, from 1989 until around 1995, when we lost touch. Our relationship became even more complex when I fell in love with and married a woman in 1991 (we are still married, now), and we then had a child. Tom always seemed a bit stand-offish with my wife. She knew why. He became less and less associated with me during that time. Eventually, he had his stroke in early ’94, and we were the first ones to visit him in the hospital. We visited regularly and, when he was sent from the hospital to the nursing home, we visited him there, even taking him on outings to the movies and to eat and to our apartment to watch TV and so forth. One of the more moving experiences I’ve ever had came when he later wrote a short story and a poem, all about his experience with his stroke, and cited me as a kind of guardian angel when he opened his eyes and saw my face in the hospital. Sadly, we moved to another state for some time at the end of 1994. The last time I saw Tom was at the nursing home in October of 1994, just shortly before we left. I could tell he was not happy about our leaving, but he was not one to show too much mushiness. Always funny, sarcastic, and sometimes downright mean, but deep down a loving guy with a huge heart that never got his due in life. Then again, he never really pursued it, either. We left for some time, first to one state and then to another. I’m not sure why I never wrote to him, but he had a forwarding address and never wrote me, either. That just happens sometimes in life. Friends simply lose touch over long distances. When we returned several years later to Gainesville, I checked with the nursing center he was last in when I was there and he was no longer there and they couldn’t tell me anything else. I looked around a bit, but never turned anything up. I’ve even tried looking him up over the internet from time to time, to no avail. This is the first time that I’ve learned whatever became of him. It turns out, by the time I came back, he was already gone. I often have wondered over the years whatever happened to him. Now that I know, I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m obviously a bit sad, even though I hadn’t seen or heard from or spoken to him for nearly 20 years, now. At the same time, it is closure. No more late night spontaneous internet searches trying to turn up if he went back to Ohio, or was still in assisted living as an old man, if he ever recovered fully from his stroke, etc., etc. … Now I know, Tom, now I know. Now, I can say the big thank you I never got to say, as I didn’t realize way back then how much you’d still be influencing me to this day. I still wonder what you’d think of my poetry. What you’d think of a film I just saw, a book I just read. Hear an old song and remember a funny anecdote about it. Anyway, thanks for the enrichment that you brought to my life. I miss you, though I know that’s “mushy”. And goodbye to you .. and Thank You, whoever you are, for putting this up and finally letting me know, once and for all, on one of my many internet searches whatever became of this guy. Sincerely, David
One last thing… I think I may well know who you are, but I won’t say your name on here if you don’t wish me to. If, of course, that’s really who you are. But if you are, Tom spoke of you all the time. Does your name start with an ‘M’? I think I may have even met you before.
Thanks so much for sharing your remembrance, David. I just found some letters Tom sent me. I treasure them, not only because he sent them, but because they are actual letters.
I knew a Tom Benner in Gainesville Florida in the 90s that might be the same person you all are writing about. If it is, I have some of his writings from 1993 titled “Stonewall” which he gave to me before I moved out of state. Please contact me – I’d love to see his works in print.
The Tom I knew had a head injury mid-90s that he swore was not a stroke. Whatever it was he was in a wheelchair for the remaining years that I knew him. I remember lugging that wheelchair around in the trunk of my itty bitty Mazda whenever we managed to liberate him from the nursing home for the day. He especially hated the nurse that sang Christian songs at full volume; he would often complain about trying to sleep through the racket.
Most of those excursions were to movies or concerts, although one day we had the hair-brained idea to try the beach. It was the first – and last – time I drove out onto the hard pack along the beach — we thought it would be easier than pushing the wheelchair up the stairs and down the beach front. I managed to get two of the tires off the hard pack resulting in Tom, his wheelchair, my brother, my nephew who must have been about 4 at the time, and my poor Mazda stuck in the sand. After what felt like an hour of us attempting different combinations of someone in the drivers seat and someone pushing, with and without beach towels under the tires, etc, some of the other beach attendees finally helped get the car back onto the hard pack. Not a day that I’ll forget.
I moved out of Gainesville in 1997. Many times I’ve tried to contact him but none of my letters received replies. None of the people that were still in Gainesville knew what happened to him (other than he wasn’t at that nursing home any more). Every few years I’ve done an Internet search hoping to find him. This is the first time something has actually popped up that might be what I’m looking for.
Dierdre, I just wrote to you offline. I would be so thrilled to have a copy of that. And I loved your story about the beach! It warms my heart to meet other people who cared about Tom.