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Stephen Edward Benko Jr., 71, of New Canaan, died Feb. 12 at Stamford Hospital after a brief battle with cancer. He was 71. Born Dec. 28, 1950 to Madeleine Murphy Benko and Stephen Edward Benko Sr., Steve grew up in an Orchard Drive house that his father built with wood salvaged from an old barn on what would become the Saxe Middle School property, and later built his own house on nearby Douglas Road.
Steve Benko, a lifelong New Canaan resident known to local families through five decades as head of the town Recreation Department, died overnight, officials said Saturday. A former chief of New Canaan Fire Co.,#1, he died “after a very courageous, but mercifully short, battle with cancer,” the organization’s president, Rob Mallozzi, said in an email to Fire Company members. “His family was by his side.”
“It is a day of profound sadness to our Fire Department and Company and our entire town,” Mallozzi said. “Please keep the Benko family in your prayers.”
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan issued this statement Saturday: “New Canaan lost one of its most dedicated and long-serving Town employees Friday night when Steve Benko passed away at Stamford Hospital surrounded by his family after a short battle with cancer. Steve served 50 years as Recreation Director of the Town of New Canaan and was a mentor and friend to generations of youth, Town employees, Fire Co.
James B. Laughlin, longtime resident of Darien, CT and Fishers Island, NY, died peacefully on January 25th, 2022, three weeks before his 90th birthday. He was the devoted husband of Eleanor W. “Susie” Laughlin for 65 years and father of Laura
L. Johnson, Tim, Ann, Tom and Chris Laughlin.
Jim was born in Paris in 1932 to Thomas and Louise Laughlin, and grew up in Manhasset, NY and Aiken, South Carolina. He attended The Brooks School and Yale University, where he was a member of the Class of 1954. He played Varsity Squash and served as President of the Chi Psi Fraternity.
After serving in the Marines from 1954 – 1956, he met his bride, Eleanor Whitman “Susie” and they married in 1957 in Bedford, NY. After leaving New York City, they established their home in the “Tokeneke” area of Darien, CT in 1960.
Maestro Arthur R. Sjögren died from Parkinson’s Disease in Danbury, CT on January 30, 2022. Art received a B.M.E. from North Park College, a M.M. from Westminster Choir College, and was a doctoral candidate at the Peabody Conservatory, Indiana University, and the Vienna Academy, Austria, where he studied conducting with Eric Erickson of the Royal College of Music, Stockholm and Swedish Radio Choir. He also studied conducting with Julius Herford, Robert Shaw, Fiora Contino, Volker Hemfpling, Marcel Courand, and Michael Schech. Art began his professional career as a singer in New York City in 1964. For three seasons, Art was a Vocal Arts Fellow at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Music Center where he studied with Phyllis Curtin and was soloist with Eric Linsdorf in the American premiere of Schoenberg’s opera “Die Glückliche Hand.“ At the Clevelend Orchestra’s Blossom Festival, he studied with Richard Miller and sang under choral conductor Robert Shaw who selected Art to be soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra in Handel’s Messiah and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.
In 1975, Art founded the acclaimed Pro Arte Singers using professional singers from the NY metropolitan area and was its Artistic Director until 2017.
Eric P. Richards of New Canaan, CT passed away peacefully January 14, 2022 at home surrounded by his loving family. He was 77. Eric was born on August 28, 1944 in San Francisco, CA to Roland Richards, then on a west coast assignment with the FBI, and Beatrice “Betty” Richards both of Darien, CT. The family returned to Connecticut in 1945 and Eric was raised in Darien on the family’s waterfront property on Five Mile River Road.
Enamored with the water from an early age, Eric began rowing boats almost from the time he could walk, then sailing and motoring around in runabouts at his Darien home. He was an early racing sailor winning his first trophy at age 10 in Noroton Yacht Club’s mid-week dinghy series in 1955, sailing the Club’s lapstraked, wooden dyer dinghies. Eric later successfully campaigned the family’s Jet 14 at Noroton, winning several more trophies. This period of his life culminated in sailing on Bolero in 1964 and ’65 and racing in the ’66 Bermuda race aboard Mah Jong a 53’ all teak custom built yawl. It was a trip to remember with estimated 50+ knots of wind crossing the Gulf Stream, the boat falling off square waves, much derring do, Eric’s first adventure into the open sea.
Eric attended local schools in Darien through the ninth grade before enrolling at Deerfield Academy, a prep school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1962. Following Deerfield, he received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Columbia University and attended Columbia’s Graduate School of Business for a term while awaiting a commission in the US Naval Reserve. He attended the Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI. Upon receiving his commission in March 1968 he had refocused his efforts from ships to flight and was accepted into the Naval Aviator pilot training program in Pensacola and in jets in Meridian, MS, Pensacola, FL and Kingsville, TX.
Eric took leave to marry then Cheryle Lee Kitchen of New York City, whom he met in a French class at Columbia 2 ½ years earlier. Following a brief honeymoon in New Orleans’ French quarter, Eric and Cheryle returned to Pensacola, then on to Texas where Eric completed his training. Eric, call sign “Yankee”, was a natural pilot. In the spring of 1969, at the end of his training, Eric was invited to return to the advanced squadron as an instructor.