Bellbrook councilman stays on run

By Sandra Baer, Contributing Writer 10:43 AM Thursday, July 16, 2009

Denny Bennett, of Bellbrook, is a man on the run.

An avid runner, Bennett has a busy schedule even in retirement. Although he retired seven years ago following a 30-year career with Xerox, Bennett remains active as a City of Bellbrook councilman and as a Web master building and maintaining Web sites.

“I’m proud that I’ve been able to help people in the community,” said Bennett, who has been on the council for 12 years. “The council members are the liaison between the city government and the people.”

Bennett grew up in Preble County in Lewisburg. He attended Lewisburg High School in a class of about 30 until his senior year when the consolidated Twin Valley North High School was built. An active runner on the cross country and track teams, he graduated in 1965 with a class of 99 from the new high school.

“I wasn’t ready for college,” said Bennett, who took a job working 16-hour days, six days a week at Dayton Etched Products.

Bennett received a draft notice and soon found himself in Texas for Air Force basic training followed by further training in tech school.

“I scored high in electro-mechanical ability so I ended up running power plants with diesel engines. My first duty station was a one-year remote in Alaska up on the Arctic Circle. It was a radar site on a mountain where the temperature went down to negative 65 degrees without a wind chill. If the power went out up there ... we died.”

Bennett realized later how lucky he was to be stationed in Alaska.

“Everybody else in my class got shipped to Vietnam and they’re all dead,” said Bennett. “The Viet Cong would shoot the generator, because they wanted a dark field. The life expectancy was not too good.”

In addition to working his regular shift in Alaska, Bennett also owned the laundry concession, which he managed in his spare time. After completing his remote assignment in Alaska, Bennett requested and was sent to a NATO base in Alconbury, England, where he helped maintain a back-up power plant. He met a Cambridge student, Zinny, who later became his first wife and taught at Bauer Elementary School in Miamisburg.

The couple had three children: Ivan Bennett, a physician’s assistant, who lives in West Chester with his wife, Angie, and son, Alex; Marie Bennett Chambers, a nurse practitioner who works at Miami Valley Hospital and lives in Clearcreek Twp. with her husband, Jason, and sons Nick and Jack; and Amy Bennett Wenzler, an assistant manager, who works for Eddie Bauer at The Greene and lives in Waynesville with her firefighter husband, Brett, and daughters Morgan and Mya.

After completing four years in the military, Bennett returned to Dayton and earned a degree in engineering science from Sinclair Community College.

In 1986, he began running with the Ohio River Road Runners Club, where he met his wife of 21 years, Carol.

Following his retirement from Xerox, Bennett studied Web design and publishing at Sinclair Community College and is a Web master maintaining about 45 Web sites that he built.

For more information about Bennett’s Web site business, visit www.DennyBennett.Net.

 

Contact this columnist at (937) 432-9054 or jjbaer@aol.com.