“Asi es.” In Spanish, wonderfully concise, and often accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, this utterance of “thus it is,” or “it is what it is” suited Ben Kennedy perfectly. Anglicized, it was Ben’s stock description of the universe, whether global or his own. He used it daily.
Ben was just a couple of weeks shy of his 87th birthday when he drifted into the “Big Sleep” he hoped would come during his last month of declining health. He passed away peacefully in his apartment on Dec. 2, 2009, thus dodging any prospect of hospitalization or nursing home care, outcomes that he abhorred.
Born in Belt, somewhere in the middle of a brood of nine children, Ben spent a number of years in the Great Falls area, served a stint in the military during WWII, and burnished the last third of his life in Helena. A single man with no close supporting family members, Ben nonetheless managed to stay active and happy, seeking busyness and purpose in providing senior companion service to other oldtimers, gathering and flattening cardboard boxes for recycling, and making the rounds of downtown Helena, scouring the streetscapes for cans, newspapers or recyclables of any sort.
Anyone could have mistaken his unkempt appearance and dumpster-diving, sack-hauling behaviors as evident of a homeless desperado, but Ben was as oblivious to social conventions as he was to social approbation. His routines were jiggered from a keen awareness of the ills of societal consumer excesses and sadness over declining trends in the planetary environment and its political systems.
For certain, no local barber ever got acquainted with Ben’s wild shocks of hair and beard, but between that hairy head and his usually sockless feet beat a strong and luminous heart.
Given his sub-poverty-line existence, Ben’s occasional small gifts to his favorite charities (The Nature Conservancy, Montana Land Reliance, Montana Wilderness Association, Prickly Pear Land Trust, among others) were the functional equivalent of major tithing that would make pale most church or government aid programs. Why expend any resources on haircuts, clothes or faux personal needs when you could save that capital from your Social Security check and redirect it to more compelling ends?
In this sense, Ben Kennedy was an exemplar of a truly fine citizen. His mostly solidarity and undemanding personal needs were regularly trumped by his sense of a greater good for the community. We could all benefit from his example. You could follow it by donating to any of the above-mentioned organizations in honor of Ben.
http://www.queencitynews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=10892&mode=flat&order=0&thold=0He was a better citizen than most people will ever be. RIP Ben Kennedy! Vaya con Dios... :patriot:
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