Obituary: William Evarts Benjamin II

By Mary Thurwachter

    MANALAPAN — He had been ill for some time and was bedridden on his 90th birthday, Sept. 18, but Point Manalapan developer and former Manalapan Mayor William Evarts Benjamin II and his wife, Maura, found joy on the occasion.
    “It was a lovely day,” Maura Benjamin said. “All his children called and we had his favorite coconut cake. A group from Hospice came over to serenade him for two hours.”
    Mr. Benjamin died three days later on Sept. 21 at their home in Pretty Marsh, Maine.
7960538093?profile=original    Maura Benjamin found one song the Hospice group sang on his birthday — You Are So Beautiful — particularly touching.
    “He was such a beautiful man,” Mrs. Benjamin, his third wife, said. The Beautiful song reminded her of the day they met at a Palm Beach party 40 years ago.
    “I was never going to marry again. I was going to have my career,” she remembered. “But then suddenly there he was. I had a ticker tape running through my mind saying, ‘This is the man you have been waiting for all your life.’ ”
    Condolence notes coming to their home described her husband much as she did, she said.
    “He was elegant and charming and always did things the right way,” she said. “He was one of the last of a dying breed.”
    Another former Manalapan mayor, Peter Blum, said he and Mr. Benjamin had been friends for 40 years.
    “He was a true gentleman of the old school,” Blum said. “He was kind and thoughtful, and as a mayor he always heard people out.”
    His calm and thoughtfulness served him well in the early 2000s, when the town was dividing over a disagreement about fair representation for Point Manalapan residents on the Town Commission.
    The issue propelled Mr. Benjamin into a successful run for the commission and being named mayor. A federal judge approved a plan Blum and Mr. Benjamin put forth giving Point Manalapan more representation on the commission.
    “We both loved Manalapan and we wanted our town to be the happy place it had always been,” Blum said.
    A native of Long Island, N.Y.,  Mr. Benjamin was a great-grandson of Standard Oil partner Henry Huttleston Rogers. The family lived in Greenwich, Conn., for many years until moving to Palm Beach in the 1950s.
    In 1957, he bought Casa Alva, a 35-acre estate on the south end of Hypoluxo Island with a 25,000-square foot mansion owned by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan. He added 50 acres by filling in swampland and then used it to develop Point Manalapan.
    He turned Casa Alva into a private club, The Manalapan Club.
    “We all loved it,” Blum said, “but it sure wasn’t a money maker” for Mr. Benjamin, who decided to close the club after members balked at raising the annual fee from $400 to $500 in 1976. There were no initiation fees.
    “It broke our hearts,” Blum said. “We loved it.”
    The Benjamins moved into Casa Alva after the club closed and lived there until they sold it in December 2012.
    Mr. Benjamin attended Columbia University before becoming an ensign in the Navy, where he served in the Pacific. When WWII ended, he worked in publishing and advertising and was director of the American Sugar Company in Haiti.
    In addition to directing the Point Manalapan Development Co., he was a director of the First State Bank of Lantana and Island National Bank and Trust.
    He was a member of many social clubs, including The Everglades Club and the La Coquille Club. In his spare time, he enjoyed boating and gardening.
    He was a founding trustee of JFK Hospital in Atlantis, president of the Norton Museum of Art, and served on the boards of many charities.
    In addition to his wife, five children, two stepchildren and 13 grandchildren survive Mr. Benjamin.
    Donations in his name may be made to the Palm Beach Community Foundation, 700 S. Dixie Highway, Suite 200, West Palm Beach, FL 33401; Friends of Acadia Bar Harbor, 43 Cottage St., Bar Harbor, Maine 04609; or the SPCA, 141 Bar Harbor Road, Trenton, Maine 04605.
    A memorial service will be held later this year.

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