I grew up with Collen on Brockett and Marjann I think they moved in when we were in Hoover, I rtmember playin in her house while it was being built, amazing I never got hurt climbing around all those houses being built on Marjann, that used to be our woods to playin ... Remember we weren't allowed to watch tv during day Go Outside!!...my brother built a two story fort, we icesksksted in there and had campfires, pretty nice havin a big brother....Colleen and I had fun and she was the smartness on the class....RIP
Colleen and I had a quite close and emotionally exhausting relationship our last two years at Kenmore West. She was a sensitive, feeling and passionate individual I was very much in love with. Colleen wrote some of the most evocative prose I have ever experienced; I re-read her still and cry, the pieces I have, anyway. I have some of her words and the Elephant Joke Book she gave me, and the green golf ball and the cranberry sweater she knit, somewhere. She was so strong and tormented by such strong feelings, I always felt she was capable of suicide, a recurring theme with her even then.
Her parents were quite conservative and strict, a revelation and rude awakening for me. But somehow despite their interference I liked them. Colleen transformed her physical appearance miraculously between 10th and 11th grades, I noticed, and all of a sudden I was head over heels and always with her or wanting to be.
Senior year she got into Pembroke in Providence and there was no way I was not heading to Cambridge, Mass., 40 miles away. She wanted Pembroke and I certainly did, imagining weekend bus rides to be together. Her father, Bob, a quite successful businessman and Goldwater supporter, took me aside and told me he wasn’t going to let his daughter go to an East Coast college that would turn her into a Communist. Left curiously and courteously unsaid was “like you.” She went to Michigan State.
I remember the first get together of old high school friends at her home on Marjann in November, 1965, at Thanksgiving break. Eight or nine of us, I remember Sue Johnson was there, mostly the couples we hung out with at West, listened to Rubber Soul and Out of Our Heads and caught up. I caught a new distance from Colleen I had never felt.
In early December she sent me the “Dear John” letter. As soon as I could, I hitchhiked from Boston to Detroit, took a bus out Grand River to East Lansing and went to her dorm room. We talked; I met her new boyfriend and left.
The Summer of 1966, when many of us were home, she called me frantic and depressed, and I thought she would finally do herself in. I called Don Greene, who lived nearby, to check up on her and he did. It all turned out to be a false alarm.
She married Brian Benzar, also a Michigan State student I believe, but not the one I had met, in Buffalo in September, 1968. Her father, still in his forties, died of leukemia in 1970. I think this deeply depressed her. She was always conflicted between her desires and ambitions as a person and the subservience society then expected of her as a woman. She was tormented and hamstrung by her strict upbringing. It was as if someone of her temperament and background could not possibly survive in the environment of the time. It was only a matter of time and circumstance; she had always had the resolve and courage.
I was living and working back in Buffalo in mid-October, 1972, but away in Maine, visiting friends. When I got home, my mother called me and told me Colleen was dead; her funeral had been a few days before. She added she had heard Colleen shot herself.
It turns out that while Colleen was in Law School at the University of Arizona in Tucson, she had bought a pistol and put a bullet through her head. Years later, I talked by telephone with her husband at the time of her death, this Brian Benzar, at his home in rural Colorado, to get his take on what had happened. He told me Colleen and he were separated at the time, but he thought her psychologist at the University had told her it might be necessary for her to enter an institution. She had always had a fear of being institutionalized, he told me, and this might have pushed her over the edge. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had been published in 1962 and she was almost certainly familiar with it.
Brian told me, too, Colleen’s mother, Mary (she always pronounced her daughter’s name Coe’-lean), had flown out to Tucson soon after Colleen’s death, to investigate and had come to the same conclusion.
In December, 2011, John Milner, much-loved English teacher at West, my wife, Deb Seifert, our daughter Evan, her partner Jeremy, and I went to a very fine production of “The Dead” at the Irish Classical Theatre in Buffalo. I had hoped for snow that evening as we walked out of the theatre, but it was not to happen. Nevertheless, inspired by Joyce, I visited Elmlawn the very next day and took a photo of her gravestone:
Thank you, Bill Berry, for sharing your story about Colleen. I was saddened that her life ended so tragically and that her formative years were wrought with anguish. I didn't know her well but always thought she was destined for success.
I remember Colleen in school. Didnt know her very well but remember thinking of her as a sweet and kind person. Very sad to hear her tragic end. RIP Colleen.
Joseph Alba
Colleen and I were best friends back in Hoover, maybe 1st or 2nd grade. Then we lost touch.
May she rest in peace.
Paul Santa Maria
God Bless Coleen!May she RIP!
Patricia Hoffmann (Andrea)
I remember going to Collen's wake and it was many, many years ago. It seems like I was still in college!
Winifred Owen (Reed)
I remember Colleen. I enjoyed talking to her.
Gretchen Gotthelf (Krouse)
I grew up with Collen on Brockett and Marjann I think they moved in when we were in Hoover, I rtmember playin in her house while it was being built, amazing I never got hurt climbing around all those houses being built on Marjann, that used to be our woods to playin ... Remember we weren't allowed to watch tv during day Go Outside!!...my brother built a two story fort, we icesksksted in there and had campfires, pretty nice havin a big brother....Colleen and I had fun and she was the smartness on the class....RIP
William Berry
Colleen and I had a quite close and emotionally exhausting relationship our last two years at Kenmore West. She was a sensitive, feeling and passionate individual I was very much in love with. Colleen wrote some of the most evocative prose I have ever experienced; I re-read her still and cry, the pieces I have, anyway. I have some of her words and the Elephant Joke Book she gave me, and the green golf ball and the cranberry sweater she knit, somewhere. She was so strong and tormented by such strong feelings, I always felt she was capable of suicide, a recurring theme with her even then.
Her parents were quite conservative and strict, a revelation and rude awakening for me. But somehow despite their interference I liked them. Colleen transformed her physical appearance miraculously between 10th and 11th grades, I noticed, and all of a sudden I was head over heels and always with her or wanting to be.
Senior year she got into Pembroke in Providence and there was no way I was not heading to Cambridge, Mass., 40 miles away. She wanted Pembroke and I certainly did, imagining weekend bus rides to be together. Her father, Bob, a quite successful businessman and Goldwater supporter, took me aside and told me he wasn’t going to let his daughter go to an East Coast college that would turn her into a Communist. Left curiously and courteously unsaid was “like you.” She went to Michigan State.
I remember the first get together of old high school friends at her home on Marjann in November, 1965, at Thanksgiving break. Eight or nine of us, I remember Sue Johnson was there, mostly the couples we hung out with at West, listened to Rubber Soul and Out of Our Heads and caught up. I caught a new distance from Colleen I had never felt.
In early December she sent me the “Dear John” letter. As soon as I could, I hitchhiked from Boston to Detroit, took a bus out Grand River to East Lansing and went to her dorm room. We talked; I met her new boyfriend and left.
The Summer of 1966, when many of us were home, she called me frantic and depressed, and I thought she would finally do herself in. I called Don Greene, who lived nearby, to check up on her and he did. It all turned out to be a false alarm.
She married Brian Benzar, also a Michigan State student I believe, but not the one I had met, in Buffalo in September, 1968. Her father, still in his forties, died of leukemia in 1970. I think this deeply depressed her. She was always conflicted between her desires and ambitions as a person and the subservience society then expected of her as a woman. She was tormented and hamstrung by her strict upbringing. It was as if someone of her temperament and background could not possibly survive in the environment of the time. It was only a matter of time and circumstance; she had always had the resolve and courage.
I was living and working back in Buffalo in mid-October, 1972, but away in Maine, visiting friends. When I got home, my mother called me and told me Colleen was dead; her funeral had been a few days before. She added she had heard Colleen shot herself.
It turns out that while Colleen was in Law School at the University of Arizona in Tucson, she had bought a pistol and put a bullet through her head. Years later, I talked by telephone with her husband at the time of her death, this Brian Benzar, at his home in rural Colorado, to get his take on what had happened. He told me Colleen and he were separated at the time, but he thought her psychologist at the University had told her it might be necessary for her to enter an institution. She had always had a fear of being institutionalized, he told me, and this might have pushed her over the edge. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had been published in 1962 and she was almost certainly familiar with it.
Brian told me, too, Colleen’s mother, Mary (she always pronounced her daughter’s name Coe’-lean), had flown out to Tucson soon after Colleen’s death, to investigate and had come to the same conclusion.
In December, 2011, John Milner, much-loved English teacher at West, my wife, Deb Seifert, our daughter Evan, her partner Jeremy, and I went to a very fine production of “The Dead” at the Irish Classical Theatre in Buffalo. I had hoped for snow that evening as we walked out of the theatre, but it was not to happen. Nevertheless, inspired by Joyce, I visited Elmlawn the very next day and took a photo of her gravestone:
Barbara Hauenstein (Rose)
Thank you, Bill Berry, for sharing your story about Colleen. I was saddened that her life ended so tragically and that her formative years were wrought with anguish. I didn't know her well but always thought she was destined for success.
Cheryl Link (Johnson)
I remember Colleen in school. Didnt know her very well but remember thinking of her as a sweet and kind person. Very sad to hear her tragic end. RIP Colleen.