Leverett Crafts & Arts

Daniel Bennett's dynamic heart finally gave out Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016, as he was surrounded by family and friends and peacefully slipped away at the age of 86.

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He was born Nov. 9, 1930, in Littleton, New Hampshire. He liked to tell the story of how he was put into a drawer as the hospital was out of infant beds; it seems a fitting start to the life of a man who was not prone to go with the flow.

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He grew up primarily in Massachusetts, first in Melrose and then in Duxbury, with some periods of time spent with his grandparents in Lisbon, New Hampshire. He went to boarding school at Noble & Greenough in Dedham; his older brother had gotten kicked out and his father did not want to waste the money so off Dan went. There, he established a reputation as a friendly, witty and oft times insubordinate student with a penchant for pranks. To quote his senior year book, "His patented grin and daring spirit soon grew to be a class institution" and his "infectious sense of humor coupled with his frank friendliness and quick wit should carry him far" (1949). And far it did. After Noble & Greenough he went to Harvard where he studied, and excelled at philosophy; he continued those studies and became a doctor of philosophy at Stanford and a Fulbright scholar at Oxford University.

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He taught at Stanford, Brown, Brandeis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Swarthmore College and Nebraska University. During the Vietnam war he dispensed with the three piece suit and put his energy into protesting an establishment that put ideology, greed and power before humanity. At Swarthmore he bought a printing press which he set up in his garage using it to publish works of leftist groups. His sympathy for the downtrodden and inclination to kick up dirt with the establishment made him a hero to his students and an irritant to the academic administration and he was eventually forced out of the more traditional academic path.

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In the 1970s he moved to Leverett, with his first wife and daughter and he was a fixture of the town ever since. After a period of separation from his wife, he met Julie and her two boys, and together they built their house on the hill, got married and had a child together. He worked with Julie building the Leverett Co-op. In the 90s he spent some years teaching in China and, upon his return, in the Connecticut prison system. In the subsequent years he devoted a large amount of time and energy with the Leverett historical Society, restoring the Moore's Corner School House, giving lectures on the history of the area and providing tours for the public.

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Dan is survived his wife Julia Shively; daughter Sophia Bennett; and step-sons Jacob and Evan Perkins; as well as his two other children, Elizabeth Kubek and Jonathan Finley. He is also survived by a host of devoted friends who loved him for his mind, his humor and his ability to provide context to this sometimes insane and frightening world with a seemingly endless well of references. He will be greatly missed.