John H. Bender Jr.

John Hughes Bender Jr. was, first and foremost a Christian teacher. He was baptized in and raised attending the Pollocksville Presbyterian Church, and in his early years, he said his family did not miss church at all. Many years later, he taught Sunday School classes there. Of course, his first profession was teaching high school science and later serving as a school principal in Onslow County, but Dad was a teacher all his life, to his sons, to his nieces and nephews, and to many others in the community.

Johnny’s Milk Route!

In that sense, it is fitting that he was actually born in a school. In 1925, his father, John Bender, Sr., was working as a custodian at Alex H. White School in Pollocksville, NC, and was allowed to live in the older school building that sat behind the newer brick building. That older wooden school had four rooms, and Dad was born in the front room on the left. That old wooden school, used for many years as storage, was still standing in the 1960s when Dad walked into the building with his sons Bill and Jack, and pointed to the back left corner of the front room on the left, and said, “I was born on a cot in that corner.”

Dad shared several other memories of his early years in that house. He remembered that his Mom, Mildred Bender, kept a milk cow and would sell milk all over Pollocksville, which at that time consisted only of the School Lane, Hwy 17, Back Street, and a number of older houses on Goshen Road. The three blocks between the school lane and Goshen road were simply woods. Dad also remembered that he always had a great bike, with a large basket. His bike was much nicer and newer than everyone else’s and he realized, many years later, that his Dad always kept a good bike because he was the Pollocksville milk delivery system!

Other transportation was still antiquated in the late 1920s in Pollocksville. In fact, my Dad was born into a horse and buggy world. While cars did exist in the 1920s, few people in Pollocksville had them, so buggies and horse carts were the main mode of transportation. Dad remembered that the “school” in which he was born had one electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling in each room during his early life, but water was drawn from a well in the yard and the family used an outhouse. Interesting to reflect that during Dad’s lifetime the world moved from that horse-and-buggy world to men on the moon with the whole world connected via the internet and our digital world. Again, those changes took place in one lifetime.

Camping at Catfish Lake was always an important part of Daddy’s life, even in his childhood. His uncle, Allan Bender often told a “Lake” story about Dad, when Daddy was about six years old. John Bender Sr, Uncle Allan, and others were camping at Bill White Ridge at the western end of the Lake under a heavy tarp. While the adults sat around the camp fire one night, they saw a still-sleeping boy, Johnny, leave the tent to pee. Apparently still half-asleep, Dad fixed on the first round thing he saw, the top of the open coffee pot beside the fire. Whipping out his personal apparatus, he let fly right into the coffee pot, and then stumbled back under the tarp and put himself back to bed! That’s the reason that Uncle Allan Bender called Daddy “Coffee Pot John” until the day he died!

At some time in the 1930s, John Bender Sr., opened a general store on Highway 17 and the family moved downtown, across the road from Parker’s Station. There Dad learned to butcher beef and hogs. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, few persons had cash, so farmers doing business with the store would bring in chickens, a few hogs, or some cattle to pay their yearly credit. Those animals were then butchered for inventory at the store by Granddaddy and my Dad.

Dad also told another memory from his childhood. He and his friend, Blue Ward, used to go out to the Simmons Farm near Quaker Neck, and visit his grandparents—Neil John and Mary Charlotte Carmichael. Neil John Carmichael managed the plantation farm for Senator Simmons, who was an important Senator in Washington DC at the time. Daddy told me that Neil John Carmichael was the only person who called Daddy, “Jack.” That is where my older brother’s nick-name came from. Being boys, Daddy and Blue would, on occasion, steel a few ripe watermelons and eat them in the field. Daddy laughed as he remembered lying to his Grandfather Neil John about these minor crimes (“No, Granddaddy, we weren’t eating watermelon!”). Of course Daddy remembered that they didn’t get away with it, since the watermelon seeds were all over their clothes!

Three Years of “Red”

I never knew Red. In fact, no one in Polloclksville ever knew Red, not really. While we know a bit about Dad’s early childhood, and we certainly know his later years, he was known as “Red” Bender only by the men he served with during World War II. Men at war frequently give each other nick-names and of course, that name came from Dad’s healthy stock of orange-red hair! Dad had been to college a while at UNC early in the war, and joined the Army Air Corps in 1943. Dad ended up flying in a B -24 Liberator Bomber with the 99th Bomb Group in the Pacific, and completed 23 combat bombing missions. He served through the end of the war.

In 1943 he began his training as a flight engineer and waist gunner, firing a 50 cal. machine gun out the side of the aircraft. Dad joked that he might have been the only service man to bomb the state of Idaho during the war! During his training he was “rushed” through gunnery school in the northwest, because another flight engineer had washed out of the previous class. Most gunnery practice at that time involved all the gunners on an aircraft firing their weapons at a drone target pulled by another aircraft. Dad said all gunners had to fire a hundred thousand rounds. However, in rushing Dad’s training he was doing his gunnery practice alone, so one day, he was the only gunner firing. In fact, the Army, in infinite wisdom, didn’t’ even send up a drone target for only one gunner to practice on, but Dad still had to fire the required rounds. On that day, there were only three men on the aircraft—the pilot, a copilot and Red.

So on that day over the gunnery practice area in Idaho, Dad was busy firing his gun at nothing. The only thing that broke up the boredom was changing out the gun barrel. After so many rounds Dad had to change out the barrel, least the gun barrel get too hot and melt. After a few hours of this meaningless exercise, Dad realized that even the pilots weren’t paying attention to his useless gunnery practice. By then, he was almost knee-deep in brass shell casings, and that’s when he had the idea. Rather than firing the last five cases of ammo meaninglessly, he simply tossed five cases of live 50 cal. ammunition out of the aircraft window—he bombed Idaho. He is probably the only American airman who bombed the United States during the whole war! He then told the pilot he had fired all of his ammo and they returned to base with nobody ever being the wiser!

Dad, like many veterans never talked much about his years as “Red” during the war. He did tell one other story of his war years. He flew in a plane named, “Southern Comfort” which featured a picture of an out-house on the nose! As flight engineer he was responsible for all flight systems while the aircraft was airborne. Once, when a 500 pound bomb got hung-up in the bomb bay, Dad had to deal with it. The bomb doors were still open, all the other bombs were gone but this one was hanging by only one hook, so that armed bomb was literally flapping around in the 200 mile-per-hour breeze in the open belly of the aircraft. It could have detonated then and there, so Dad, hooked himself up to a single safety rope, walked out over the open bomb bay doors on an eight inch catwalk, and began to kick at the bomb hook. After several kicks, the bomb released and fell harmlessly out of the plane. Of course, that was part of Dad’s job as flight engineer, and someone had to get that live bomb out of the aircraft or it would have killed them all. They could not even land with that armed bomb on board! Still, it was my Dad that dealt with it! On that day so long ago, my Dad had a dangerous job to do and he took care of business! I think he might have had more guts than I’ll ever have; I’m not sure I could have done that.

Like I said, none of us ever really knew Red. He was born of war, and only lasted for three years out in the distant Pacific. Still, I like the idea of a rebellious red-headed kid realizing just how dumb that gunnery exercise in 1943 was, and then tossing those cases of ammo out that window! That guy was brave. He was half-way around the world, far from his home and family, and he was fighting a war that changed the world forever. Like most of those men, Red was only eighteen years old. That was and will remain forever, America’s Greatest Generation, and that generation really did build what we know as modern America. Still, I wish I had known that guy; I wish I could somehow meet that kid, Red Bender. I think I would have liked Red a lot!

Building the Baby Boom!

Like many servicemen coming home from WW II, Dad came back from the war with a passion, impatient really; ready to get back to living his life. He went back to UNC to continue his education, and got more serious with the woman he would later marry—Helen Inez Hughes.

Dad remembered being home from college one weekend and his cousin, Mary Charlotte White, told him to come with her to a basketball game at Alex H. White School in the old white gym. During those years, Alex H. White included grades 1 – 11, and high school ended after grade 11. In fact, both Dad and Mom graduated high school at Alex H. White.

So on that night, Dad and “Sis” went to the game, and found that Helen Hughes is taking up the money at the door that evening. After the game, Sis insists that Dad give Helen a ride home, and further that Dad drop off Sis first! Dad realized only a few minutes later that the whole evening had been a conspiracy! Rather than go home, Helen insisted that Dad park the car at a turn-out that used to be at the north end of the Trent River Bridge. While there, Mom suggested that they not wait for Dad to finish UNC, but get married sooner. Dad said he could not support Mom right then, but Mom was persistent and said she could work to support them both. During that discussion, a car rolled by with a few cans trailing behind. Virgil and Penny Bender had gotten married that same day, and were on their way to their honeymoon just as my Mom and Dad were deciding to get married! Dad married Mom on March 22, 1948. Soon after they built the first house to exist between Goshen Road and the School lane in Pollocksville on the corner of Third and Foy Street (Now an empty lot).

Of course, that is precisely when Dad’s contribution to the Baby Boom began! Their first son, John H. Bender, III (Jack), was born on June 19, 1952. I, William Neil Bender (Bill) came along the next year on September 26, 1953. Dad always said I was a Christmas baby, who came a few hours too late (do the math!). The “surprise” baby, Wade Honrine Bender came along the next year on November 21, 1954.

Raising Babies/Raising Kids

Dad was, in the early 1950s, working as Principal of Jacksonville High School in Jacksonville, NC. All three of his sons began school there.

For a few years after his marriage, Daddy was teaching at the high school in Swansboro, NC, but after two years was moved to Jacksonville High School as their new principal. He often said that each year, on the first few days of school, he spent time with the student folders and memorized every single kid’s face in his school. He also memorized one or two facts about them. That was one way he changed lives—he could call every single kid in school by name, and he knew their family. It was a big help for the rowdy kids in school, and Dad learned to be an excellent, firm, but loving disciplinarian.

It was during those Jacksonville years, that we kids began to realize how special our Dad was. I remember one Saturday in 1959 or 1960, Dad saying that he was going to the movies, which was a really big deal back then. I got all excited, but then Dad said that we couldn’t come. That broke my five year old heart! I remember Daddy seeing me crying about not going, so he explained that he had to go to the movies that day with another child who had never been to a motion picture show. He explained that this other kid had no Dad, and that his Mom could not afford a picture show, so Dad was going to take that boy and not us! I was still hurt deeply as a five year old, but that was the first time I realized how much Dad did for other kids. As a principal he had his finger on the pulse of many troubled families in Onslow County, and he often did things like this, most of which we never knew about.

In his life, Dad much have touched hundreds if not thousands of lives in that fashion, usually in a very profound way. He considered this part of the life of a Christian—to help others whenever possible. A number of young men actually lived in our home in Pollocksville, when they had nowhere else to go. This continued long after my brothers and I grew up and left home. I know that Dad helped educate Richard Parker at Craven Community College, and many years later, Jay Drizza lived with Dad for several years, while earning his GED and CDL (truck driving license). Dad paid for some of the college education of eight or ten persons who were not his own children, and those are only the ones I know of. Over the years, Dad counseled many kids and young adults, and that never really ended, until Dad hit the age of 85 or so. That is one of the ways my Dad made a real difference for others in his life.

And that influence continues. I know that both of my brothers and their wives, Jack and Melinda, and Wade and Sharon are doing similar things with a large number of individuals, as are my wife and I. In fact, that is probably one of Dad’s most important legacies. Still, if my wife and I have helped 20 or 30 folks in our life in some profound way, Dad must have helped a thousand, and he never really stopped. He was a true blessing to every one of those folks; John Bender Jr., changed lives, and because of that, each of his sons and their families are doing the same.

Return to Pollocksville

In 1962, Dad decided to open Bender School Supply, a school supply business with his uncle Frank T. Bender as a silent partner. This meant that our family moved from Jacksonville and returned to Dad and Mom’s home town of Pollocksville to open that business. Daddy was the eighth generation of Benders to live in Pollocksville, so many members of his extended family lived there. Many worked, at one point or another, in that family business. In some ways, that business was blessed from the beginning—only three years after the business opened, the federal government passed the ESEA, a law that pumped millions of dollars into the poor, rural schools of Eastern NC. Because Dad’s business was the only school supply business in eastern NC, some of that money found its way into the business.

Thus did life go on. Dad and Mom built the business together, and both worked together in the business. Dad was the first salesman, and Mom was the office and warehouse staff. We three boys were working in the business in grades 5, 4, and 2, as Dad’s cheap labor force.

The business expanded regularly, and it seems that almost all the kids in Pollocksville from 1967 through 1980 worked during the summer in that business. During those years it was not uncommon for 25 to 40 high school students to work there in the summer, and more than one romance, not to mention several marriages, stemmed from those co-ed working summers! In fact, Dad’s first-born grandson, John Berry Bender, met his wife Melissa working that job one summer. With the family changing and his sons growing into adulthood, the business evolved into Bender and Sons School Supply.

During the late 1960s, Dad’s house was Kid Central for Pollocksville. With three boys so close in age, it was probably natural that our house became the hangout for all the kids our age in town. Our house always seemed to be filled with kids. It was not uncommon for ten, fifteen or more kids to be playing basketball in the empty lot across the road, or tossing a football in the yard. We rode all around town—all 15 or 20 of us kids—as the town’s first biker gang! Of course we were actually riding bikes and not motor cycles. Still, it is hard to remember a time when there weren’t at least 10 or 15 of us kids playing together during those years, and Dad and Mom rolled with the punches.

Like many generations of our family, our rough camp on the shores of Catfish Lake was a favorite spot of Dads. Almost all of the family loved the Lake Camp and many of our generation of “Kids” in Pollocksville spent many camping trips there—Tinker, Tatter, Frankie, Tim, Delbert, Joe, Ben, Jimmy, and the three of us, Jack, Bill, Wade. This list should probably include scores of others all of whom loved the Lake and all camped at various times with Daddy there. It was a spot of relaxation, laugher, fishing, and great joy for Dad, throughout his entire life!

I have to mention the many times music emerged from the Bender household during those years from 1965 through the 1980s. By the late 1960s, we boys had formed a band, Jack on drums, Wade on bass guitar, me on guitar, and our cousin Mark Bender on guitar. We played in the community building and once or twice at the country club. Of course, our family always sings Christmas carols at the yearly Christmas party, but in the 1960s and 1970s we often had music on Sunday afternoons at the house, and it seems that most of the folks in Pollocksville came from time to time. At those sessions, we would all play, and Mom would bang out some hymns on the piano. Daddy would sing at the top of his voice. That music tradition continues each Christmas party even today some 50 years later. Daddy always said Mom was the reason for the music in our home, but it was really both of them. Daddy loved nothing more than those music sessions with half the folks in Pollocksville singing around the piano, while his sons played all the other instruments.

Empty Nesters

We brothers headed to college in the early 1970s, and Dad and Mom’s life changed yet again. For the first time, they got to welcome “daughters” into their family. We boys all married a few years later in the mid 1970s. Wade married Sharon, Jack married Melinda, and those marriages would last a lifetime. Being the proverbial middle kid, it took me a while to get marriage right, but in the early 1990s, I brought home Ms. Renet Lovorn, who met Mom only a year or so before Mom died. Mom told me she really liked her, so for me Renet was a keeper!

Thus, in the mid-1970s Mom and Dad became “empty nesters.” Of course, the nest was never really empty, since Dad continued to help folks, to teach folks, and on occasion to have folks move in. Also after we three sons married, the grandkids began to arrive in fairly short order. Dad and Mom had five grandchildren, John Hughes Bender, IV, and Katie Bender Bell (Jack’s kids), John Berry Bender and Laura Bender Waller (Wade’s kids), and Joseph William Bender, (Bill’s son).

During those years, Mom and Dad found a great campsite at Emerald Isle right on the beach, and for a good 25 years, they camped there for at least six months each summer. For many of those summers Jack and Wade took their families to the beach and camped with them for weeks on end. I was always living out of state, but still pulled my camper down to the beach for at least a week each year, so we could all camp together. Nothing made Mom and Dad happier than having the family camp together. We also did the same at the Carmichael reunion, a family affair that lasted from the 1970s until the early 1990s.

Our Mom, and Dad’s lifelong partner, Helen Inez Bender, died from cancer in July of 1992. Only three months later, Dad’s mother, Mildred Carmichael Bender Mosteller also passed away. Dad had been tending those two women for nearly ten years, so it was quite a change in life for him. Still, he managed to redefine himself, and sure enough, another one of his live-in folks –Jay Drizza--moved in during that period after Mom passed away. Dad, ever the teacher, helped Jay through a GED and his truck driver’s license.

Is Santa Claus Real?

It was that first Christmas 1992, when I began, once again, to really believe in Santa Claus. That Christmas was a bit sad, since Mom and “Granny” Mrs. Mildred Bender Mosteller--were no longer with us. Dad made a casual statement that it would be the first time in his life he would have no surprise gifts from Santa Claus the next morning. Apparently Granny had always had a surprise gift under her tree for Daddy on every single Christmas of his life. I heard that comment, as did both of my sister-in-laws, Sharon Bender and Melinda Bender. I’m still not sure why I heard that when neither of my brothers did. Still, it set off yet another family tradition.

Only a bit later that evening, as the singing went on in the living room, Melinda pulled me to the side and took me to the other room. There she handed me a couple bottles of jelly that she’d had wrapped up for Daddy to open on Christmas Eve along with the other presents. She told me to unwrap them, put a tag on that said, “From Santa” and put those out for Daddy’s surprise Santa Claus gift for the next morning. I was staying at the house that night, with my wife Renet and my son, Willie, so I would be putting out a “Santa” surprise for Willie anyway. Melinda had decided that Daddy to have a Santa surprise too! Then I saw Sharon in the other room busy unwrapping a couple of additional gifts she had for Dad, to add to his Santa surprise. I teared up and began to unwrap a gift too, which I added that to Daddy’s Santa surprise.

And surprised he was! The next morning while Willie was playing in the living room with some new toy or another, Dad came in, noticed the few gifts in a separate chair, and asked, “Whose presents are these?” Then he read one of the cards, and smiled. Sure enough, Dad received his Santa surprise gifts just as he had all his life, and I told him it was Melinda and Sharon that wanted to make sure he had a Santa Claus surprise! I should mention that those surprise gifts continued to appear on every Christmas morning right through Christmas of 2016, the last Christmas of my Dad’s life. Such are the amazing sensitivities of both of my sister-in-laws! They are truly marvelous women, and have been the best additions to our family that anyone could hope for.

Just last Christmas, Christmas of 2016, Dad’s mind was mostly gone. He still knew Jack and Wade and I, but was unsure of almost everyone else. Still, he was well enough for Wade to bring him to the family Christmas party on December 23. He sat by the fireplace in a home he’d built fifty years before (Jack had remodeled the old home place) and while unsure of who many of the folks were, he still managed to sing the old hymns and Christmas carols at the top of his lungs! When I saw Daddy singing it brought a tear to my eye, and I said to Jack, “Are you seeing this?” Jack was, and he’d already asked his daughter in law to take a brief video of Daddy singing. Daddy remembering those words, words he’d sung all his life, songs like Joy to the Word, and The Holy City, that was the best Christmas present ever!

And that’s what Santa Claus really is. When some youngster, all wise and all knowing as only a 9 or 10 year old can be, asks if Santa real, I tell them I believe in Santa Clause, then I share that story. Of course, the large man in the red suite is just a way to communicate love to young children, but the real Santa, the love that families show at Christmas, that’s most assuredly real. I’ve seen that love every Christmas of my life, up close and personal, and in 1992 at Christmas, I saw that love in the faces of these two marvelous women, Melinda Bender and Sharon Bender, who would not let my Dad go a single Christmas without a Santa Claus Surprise. The real Santa is that love, that love of family, and of others, that Christmas seems to bring out in everyone. That love, of course, is the reason for the Christmas season, and is best shown by God’s gift to all of us, his son’s birth.

Daddy’s Heaven

During the Christmas of 2014, Daddy was very ill, and I had the honor to spend a great deal of time in his hospital room with him on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We all thought we might lose Dad at that point, and Daddy himself knew he was gravely ill. Once, during our conversation that Christmas Eve, I asked Daddy if he was scared, and being the teacher he always was he taught me yet another lesson. He said, “Son I don’t fear death. When I think of Heaven, I look forward to seeing my Dad, your Granny, and of course your Mama, my Helen.” By then I was crying, and Daddy was too, so to lighten the mood I shared my hope for Heaven, something to do with the old Carmichael reunion, when all the Carmichaels and Benders sat around telling family stories, eating, laughing, and singing hymns like we tend to do so often. That is my best and most wonderful view of Heaven.

We laughed at that, but then Daddy surprised me. He said, “Son we can’t know what Heaven really is. Nobody can. My best hope—the most beautiful thing I can think of--is seeing my family once again. Still, what I know is that God has something in store for me that is at least as wonderful as I can imagine. In fact, I’m sure God has something for me that is more wonderful than anything I can think of, so no I’m not afraid. I’m ready.” I lost it at that point, and Daddy and I had a good cry, yet we were still laughing together.

God did not call Daddy home that Christmas, and we had several more years with him. During those years, Dad’ memory got progressively worse, and at the end, he seemed to know only his three sons, and to some degree Sharon and Melinda. Still, I didn’t worry about Daddy any more after that. He was ready, and of course, He had taught me yet another lesson, that our secured future as Christians is greater than anything we can possibly imagine. Another lesson and another wonderful memory!

A Christian Man, a Christian Life

So that is it. That is a summary of a few memories and stories of Daddy’s life. John H. Bender, Jr.’s life was a Christian life, well lived. My Dad was one of the best men I have ever met, one of the best men I know. It was his strength, his Christian beliefs that guided our family and held us together for decades. All who knew him saw those Christian beliefs in his life and his work, but perhaps his best legacy is that all three of his sons and their wives continue to this day the same types of work Daddy did. Those Christian beliefs now guide his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who are committed Christians. We are all helping others as God places those in need before us. Even the great-grand children that will never meet Daddy will benefit from his Christian life as they will see what their parents do for others. That was a life well lived, leaving a legacy to admire.

Dad, John H. Bender, Jr. now belongs to the ages. His life lived, he is now with Mama, Granny, his Dad, with Uncle Mac and Sister, and all the other Carmichaels and Benders in Heaven. He has now gone home. I simply wish and pray that I, my brothers, our children, and everyone whom Dad’s life touched might live as well as he.

In Loving Memory of John Hughes Bender, Jr.