Paul Sinclair Bennett – 50th Reunion Essay

Paul Sinclair Bennett

7608 Savannah Drive

Bethesda, MD 20817

paul@paulbennett.us

Spouse(s): Bonnie Bunting (1982-2002); Carol Herndon (2004 – )

Child(ren): Rebecca Bunting; Andrei Israel; Aimee Martin; Theodore Martin

Grandchild(ren): Sunniva, Oliver

Education: Yale ‘69

Career: Theater Manager (1969-1971); Editor (1971-1973); Frelance writer (1973 – )

Avocations: In “retirement,” I lead relationship workshops with my wife, Carol, and work on book projects — writing my own and assisting others with theirs. I write fiction and poetry and play the native American flute.

College: Silliman

“In the Beginning was the Word.”

Words have been the beginnings of most of what I treasure.

I was writing before I came to Yale, imagined being not just an actor, but an actor-playwright. Then, after a theater crumbled around me, I made a fine living as a fundraising writer for 35 years or so.

Words kept making a difference for me and for others.

One day I typed, “One-Dollar Sale in Our National Forests,” and the letter that ensued brought hundreds of thousands of members to an environmental organization. Letters I wrote raised hundreds of millions of dollars for things I believe are important: environmental protection, civil rights, women’s rights, universities, and hospitals.

One day, while avoiding raising money for something, to my great surprise, I typed, “The Master of the King’s Dragons was downcast.” Mystified, I kept typing, and a story unfolded that, decades later, I still can’t read without tears.

One evening, I said to Bonnie Bunting, “I noticed this afternoon that I want to ask you to marry me.” I was married to her for the rest of her life. Though we never had children together, today her grandchildren are my grandchildren.

People nudged me to write some of what I’d been saying about loving Bonnie, about caring for her, about losing her. I wasn’t sure how to go about that, until one day I sat down and wrote:

This book is what I would say softly to you if you and I were sitting on the porch after the setting sun has left us, two shadows facing each other… or if perhaps your head rested on my shoulder as your tears ran… this book is what I would murmur to you about grief.

Those words abruptly made sense of a book that people had asked me to write. I know that book has been a comfort to some people, and I’m pretty sure that Loving Grief is the best thing I’ve written, at least so far.

Early one New Year’s Day, I said to Carol Herndon, “Will you marry me in 2004?” It was wrenching and gorgeous, loving two women, one alive and one no longer alive. If it’s going to work, the one who’s alive has to be one brave, big-hearted woman.

I suppose there was something about writing Loving Grief that let me move into an era very different from those years when I wrote profusely and profitably and anonymously, an era that’s more about standing up and speaking face-to-face with groups of people, leading workshops about relationships alongside my Carol, and a relationship fostering relationships.

Again and again, words have been there at my beginnings: the beginnings of stories or the beginning of a book or the beginning of a marriage or the beginning of an era in my life.

At 70, I’m thinking I may have just one more era left. I’m wondering what might I say, right now….