Paula Bennett
Feb.
8, 1947 – Oct. 26, 2025
Her arrival
in Kingsport was announced in the February 1961 issue of the junior high
newspaper, the "Robinson Review":
New
Personalities:
Paula
Bennett
The
first new personality to Robinson is Paula Bennett. She lives at 229 De Lee
Drive in Colonial Heights. The school she used to attend is Disque Jr. High in
Gadsden, Alabama. Paula is 5 feet 3 inches tall, has green eyes, black hair and
loves to dance. Her favorite colors are lavender, green, and red. Shrimp and
hamburger are her favorite foods, and her favorite record is “Surrender” by
Elvis Presley. Paula has one sister, Rea Bennett, who attends Judson College in
Marion, Alabama. Paula’s ambition is to become a teacher. Paula is fourteen and
she is in Miss Riley’s homeroom.
But the
boys of Ross N. Robinson Junior High School didn’t need an introduction from
the school newspaper. We already knew she was at Robinson. She’d been the object
of much conversation in the hallways:
“Who’s
that new girl?”
“Golly,
she’s cute.”
“She
got a boyfriend yet?”
I could
only admire Paula from afar. I wasn’t in Miss Riley’s homeroom.
But the
next school year she was in my Latin class. And that began a lifelong
friendship.
We didn’t
have many classes together over the years but it seemed she was always dating
one of my friends.
We did
have one date in college. She came to Duke my junior year. We went to a dance
on Friday night – boy, could she dance! That Robinson Review article was
right! - and to a Dionne Warwick concert on Saturday night.
And through
the years we always kept in touch: mail, phone, later email, then text. I just
got a text from her a month ago. She had lost my phone number.
It
seemed a little confusing: my phone number is my text number. But I knew Paula
was now prone to moments of confusion. She had been diagnosed with a brain
tumor a little over a year earlier and had undergone some brutal treatments. Still
she was optimistic.
She had
texted me in May with the shocking news that our mutual friend Jeannie Williams
had died of a heart attack. The three of us had been fast friends over the years.
We overlapped one summer quarter at UT and I had spent many afternoons at their
apartment.
During
college I would get letters from Paula who was at Columbia College (in S.C.),
catching me up on her campus life and how Jeannie was doing at Salem College
(N.C.). We always kept up.
When
I was on David Letterman’s show in 1990, I think she was my only high school
classmate who actually stayed up to watch.
I visited
my grandkids in Texas a few years ago and Paula called on the cell with museum
recommendations in Dallas that she got from her sister.
It was
Jeannie who had kept me updated on Paula’s cancer treatments this past year. But
then it was Paula who brought me the bad news about Jeannie. She told me she
and Jeannie had just had an hour conversation about life’s challenges and life’s
rewards. End of life kind of stuff.
On Wednesday
I got the text I had dreaded: End of life had come for Paula. She had succumbed
to her brain tumor.
I had
known that news was coming but I wasn’t ready for it.
I had
a note on my computer to send Paula my new book, just as I had sent her all the
previous ones. And I had been trying to plan a trip to visit a friend in
Charlotte and then swing by to see Paula in Brevard on the way home.
Paula
did fulfill that junior high ambition: she became a teacher, 26 years in the
classroom in Birmingham. But she became so much more: an author (“GRITS: Girls
Raised in the South”), a world traveler (she loved Africa), a travel blogger
(she, husband Garry, an RV and the road) and a caregiver during her husband Garry’s
long battle with Parkinson’s.
When
she and Garry left Alabama in 2009, she jumped into everything in her new
hometown Brevard: church, AAUW, book club, college classes (taking and
teaching), museums, theater, frequenting the local coffee houses, restaurants
and book stores.
It was
the same as always. Wherever Paula was, she made it a better place.
Now she’s
in the proverbial better place. And I know she will make it an even better
place.
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