Dave Benson, a co-founder of First Night Honolulu and the Honolulu Symphony Fun Run fundraiser, Race Director of the Honolulu Marathon from 1980 to 1984, and 30-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department, died April 2 after a short battle with ALS. He was 82.
Benson made one of his most enduring contributions to Hawaii when he created the Bobby Benson Center, a residential alcohol and drug treatment center for adolescents, after the death of his son, Robert “Bobby” Benson, in 1985. He served as the organization’s president for its first three years, as vice president for the next six, and remained active in advisory roles for the rest of his life.
He founded the Great Hawaiian Relay Festival as a fund-raiser for the organization.
“He never did anything small,” said Merry Lee Corwin, a long-time friend and fundraising colleague. “My favorite memories of him are working with him on those many big projects — the Bobby Benson Center, the Honolulu Marathon, the Honolulu Symphony Fun Run.”
Corwin said Benson had always enjoyed “big projects.”
“When he was at Roosevelt (High School), he and his friends disassembled some kind of a car and reassembled it on the roof (of the school). I don’t remember why they did it. They maybe even didn’t know why they did it, but that was one of his beginnings of big projects. He never did anything small.”
Benson’s hanai son, Toby San Luis, described him as a man who “faced and persisted through many challenges in his lifetime, with the final one being ALS. He impacted a tremendous amount of people and organizations, and from tragedy made transformation. In the ironies life writes, he became a hanai father figure to me, child of a single mom, around the same time he lost his two sons, Bobby and Mike, at young ages and founded the Bobby Benson Center.”
“He body-surfed Makapu‘u, played ukulele by ear, reassembled a car on a roof as a prank, served in the Honolulu Police Department for 30 years… loved a good cheeseburger, was an Elk and Rotarian, did my 4:45 a.m. paper route a couple times, and taught me (how to drive) stick shift by tossing some truck keys (to me) and saying ‘drive that back,’” San Luis said.
David Clarke Benson was born in Hoolehua, Molokai, on Jan. 8, 1942. His father, Homer Benson, was the island physician.
The family moved to Oahu and Benson graduated from Roosevelt High School. He joined the Honolulu Police Department in 1963, retiring with the rank of major in 1993.
Benson’s retirement from HPD didn’t end his career in law enforcement. He moved to Vermont and served first as chief of the Castletown police department and then with the Rutland County Sheriff’s Department. He earned an M.Ed. from Castleton University in Castleton, Vermont in 2000.
Linda Coble remembered Benson as a police officer and as a member of the Rotary Club of Honolulu. They met shortly after she came to Hawaii in 1969 and became Hawaii’s first female television news reporter.
“I was a reporter, and he was a cop, and I would see him out in the field all the time. I believe we had the same sources (of information about criminal activity in Waikiki) because every time I would go out on a story he would be there.”
Years later, when they were members of the Rotary Club of Honolulu, she watched Benson take the lead in saving some green space in Waikiki.
“There was this block between Royal Hawaiian Avenue and Seaside Avenue, the whole block was disgusting, and they were probably going to build another hotel (on it). So the Rotary Club led by Dave Benson began to work on creating the Centennial Park in Waikiki, which is now green, beautiful trees, blossoms. It was his inspiration to work with a neighbor in the community and get the Rotarians to build that park instead of watching the place crumble.”
Centennial Park Waikiki officially opened to the public on February 1, 2021.
Coble saw him keep going, and keep giving to the community, even after ALS put him in a wheel chair.
“I was so proud of him, wheeling around a couple of months ago at the big open house out at the Bobby Benson Center. People from various organizations involved in child needs wanted to see what the BBC was, and Dave was talking with them, joking with them. You know he’s in pain, but he’s sitting there in the (wheel) chair and telling them how it all began, and where it’s going forward. It was wonderful. He never lost a single bit of energy in his heart.”
“He was a great friend, a wonderful community giver, and brave man, and he’ll be greatly missed.”
In addition to his hanai son, Benson is survived by his wife, Cynthia Jane Benson; his twin daughters Sherri Rietow and Laurie Rietow Caguab; his brother, Homer Randolph Benson, Jr.; his sister, Kathryn Jane Benson; his daughter-in-law and son-in-law Lisa and Russell Wong; his grandchildren, Bryson Cabuag and Lauren Cabuag; and great grandchildren, Haylee Cabuag, Major Cabuag Porter, and Monroe Cabuag-Porter.
A celebration of life is scheduled for 11 a.m. on June 1 at Borthwick Memorial in Honolulu.
Donations in remembrance of Benson’s work can be sent to:
Bobby Benson Center
56-660 Kamehameha Hwy
Kahuku, HI 96731
or at bobbybenson.org.
