News

By Tim O’Meilia

Twice before, Briny Breezes Mayor Roger Bennett has threatened to quit because of ill health, but he always returned. Now he really means it.
Bennett, who has guided the town of mobile homes with a quick quip and a gentle hand for seven years, announced at the Aug. 22 Town Board of Aldermen’s meeting that he would resign effective Oct. 24.
Bennett, 80, cited a health scare during the summer, from which he’s not fully recovered, and the ill health of his mother-in-law, who is 101. “Now I’ll have a happy home,” he teased.
“Our best mayor ever,” summed up Town Clerk pro tem Nancy Boczon, who joined the board of aldermen a year before Bennett.
In a town with a single part-time employee, the mayor’s post is largely ceremonial and doesn’t even have a vote. Over the years, Bennett has become the town’s unofficial operations manager, making sure the water lines are flowing and the sewage pumps working.
“Roger is concerned. He wants Briny to be good. He wants Briny to work. So Roger works,” Boczon said.
Bennett was elected mayor in 2007, during the tumult over the possible sale of the park to a developer. He has been elected to successive one-year terms ever since.
“I’ve been here since 1952, and I kind of know who is leading in the right direction,  and he’s been a well-liked leader,” Alderman Pete Fingerhut said.
Bennett has been the town’s primary contact person with other government agencies. “He’s been an excellent liaison with other towns,” said Board President Sharon Kendrigan.
He also has a knack for handling angry constituents and defusing volatile situations. “Roger’s never going to upset anybody, but he always gets his way,” Boczon said.
Bennett learned that skill as chairman of the Mass Communications Department at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.
 “When you’re dealing with 25 faculty members and 3,600 students, it’s always fraught with drama,” he said. “I’ve never been one to bulldoze people. I try to be sensible and forgiving.”
Bennett and his wife, Barbara, bought a lot in Briny in 1991 and moved there full time in 1995 when he retired. They’ve been married 52 years.
“I’ve had a good crew,” he said of Boczon, Kendrigan and Fingerhut, who served on the board with him for more than five years. “They’re a stable, bullheaded group. The town is in good hands.”
The Bennetts intend to stay in Briny. A son and daughter live nearby. His daughter was married on the beach this winter. “We’re Briny people,” he said.
He and Barbara intend to finish their 55-day cruise to England and Ireland that was interrupted by his illness this summer.
“We need to get our traveling done before our hips and knees give out,” he said.