John Robert Bennett

BENNETT, HILGER, MOLINA, THOMAS, IVERS, STOCKING

Posted By: Tara (email)
Date: 5/29/2009 at 13:39:16

John Robert Bennett, 69, died September 1, 2008 in Iowa City, from prostate cancer.

John is survived by his wife of thirty years Astrid Hilger Bennett, their children Colin (with fiancé Carolina Molina) of Santiago, Chile; Hanna (with husband John Thomas) of Chicago and Coralville; Ian Bennett, of Elkhart, Indiana; and John’s beloved dog Tuck.
Born in 1939 in Brooklyn, NY to John Granville and Eva Marie Ivers Bennett, John spent 6 adventurous childhood years on the Navajo Reservation in Tuba City, AZ, he then moved with his family to locations in California. His high school interests were sports of all kinds; he was a California Gymnastics State Champion on the longhorse, and lettered in gymnastics as a college freshmen at Occidental College in Los Angeles. After an interlude to follow his youthful Jack Kerouac instincts, John avoided being drafted by enlisting in the US Navy, where he served on the USS Columbus for 18 months with his good friend Bob Lowe and was discharged on the eve of the Vietnam War. He likes to describe this as his running-away-to-sea phase. Returning to Los Angeles, he earned his BA in English Literature at Occidental, his MSJ in Journalism at Northwestern, became a newspaper city editor, writer and freelance photographer, and started his college teaching career at UCLA. Further teaching at Indiana University led him to the University of Iowa, where he taught from 1978 until retiring in 2008. John had a gift for strategic thinking and was devoted to tutorial-type teaching of his students. He organized the first Apple Computer college writing lab while at UI. He also served on the Iowa State Library Commission.
John and Astrid met and were married in the Bloomington (Indiana) Friends Meeting (Quaker) in 1978. An avid cook and a voracious reader, John could be found reading five books simultaneously on different topics. He was passionate on the topic of peak oil and global climate change and its implications for our children and grandchildren.
In 2002, shortly after completion of treatments for colon cancer, John became known for his rescue of a nine-year-old neighbor from the jaws of a Rottweiler. In typical fashion, he tuned out the attention and moved on.
John is also survived by his brother Clark and by his first wife, Holly Stocking. Memorials may be directed to the Friends of the Iowa City Public Library, the Johnson County Dog Park, Iowa City Hospice, or the Friends of Hickory Hill Park.