Robert S. Benjamin, 92, who started his career as a foreign correspondent at age 15 and was the last survivor among the correspondents who founded the OPC 70 years ago, died in his sleep at his home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico on September 20. As World War II started, Benjamin and 12 other correspondents founded the OPC in 1939.
In 1940, he chaired the Club’s first dinner, an event that marked publication of The Inside Story, a book written by OPC members on world affairs and personal experiences. In 1998, he founded the OPC’s Robert Spiers Benjamin Award for best reporting in any medium on Latin America. Over the past six years, Benjamin suffered from debilitating dementia, limiting his passions for traveling, reading, writing and playing Scrabble.
With money earned from writing travel articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Voyager and other publications, Benjamin, then 15, sailed to Europe on a tramp ship and wired stories to United Press on events that led to the Spanish Civil War. At 16, he sailed to South America. His travel articles, many published in The New York Times, reported on expansion of aviation in Honduras, the Panama Canal, ice-breaking vessels off New York’s Fire Island, Mexico, the Bahamas, Yankees in Malaysia and opening of the Pan American Highway.
In 1934, the Brooklyn Eagle described Benjamin, then 17, as a “youthful veteran globetrotter, journalist, explorer, photographer, and author of two books who has explored out-of-the-way places in South America, rummaged in hidden corners in the West Indies, seen Labrador and taken pictures on several continents, while he quietly pursues his studies here at Erasmus Hall.”
During World War II, Benjamin served as an intelligence officer in the U. S. War Department, assigned to Chile and Argentina to monitor Nazi espionage operations and capturing German spies. His other posts included staff writer for the Panama Star & Herald; assistant editor at Dodd, Meade and Company; Time-Life bureau chief in Chile, where he was correspondent for Time, Life and Fortune, and McGraw Hill World News; director of Latin American operations for Vision magazine; New York Times correspondent in Mexico; and founder of his own press agency, Inter-American Press Service, and his own public relations firm.
His first wife, Dorothy Calhoun, whom he married in Santiago, Chile, in 1945, died in 1961, and he married three more times. Benjamin’s books included Call to Adventure (1934), The Vacation Guide (1940) and I’m an American (1941). interviews with famous naturalized Americans.
In his memory, donations can be made to Alma, a home for the elderly in San Miguel. Contributions should be sent to Alma, Jacarandas No. 158, La Lejona, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Codigo Postal 37790, Mexico.
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Peter Jennings was the awards presenter for the 1998 OPC Awards Dinner. He graciously posed with Bob Benjamin and OPC Executive Director Sonya Fry.
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OPC Founders Fay Gillis Wells and Bob Benjamin share a toast at the 1999 Awards Dinner. |