Around Town

‘The Best Dad Any Kid Could Ever Ask For’: Family, Friends Gather To Remember Steve Benko

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Lindsay Gardner talked to her dad, Steve Benko, for the last time just a few days before he passed away. 

The two sat in his hospital room, unsure of what to say, Gardner recalled Thursday. “So I asked him, I said, ‘Dad, what do you want us to do?’ We didn’t know what to do. Who knows what to do? This isn’t something we’re groomed for,” Gardner told hundreds of congregants gathered at First Presbyterian Church of New Canaan for Benko’s memorial service, and hundreds more watching a livestream online. “What he told me was, he just wants all of us to go out and be happy.

Around Town

‘There’s a Way To Disagree Without Being Disagreeable’: Local Clergy Plan Jan. 26 ’Pray for New Canaan’ Service

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Saying many congregants have grown anxious and divided amid the pandemic and following a difficult municipal election, local clergy members that have forged strong bonds with each other amid the pandemic are planning a “Pray for New Canaan” day later this month. To be held Wednesday, Jan. 26 at St. Aloysius Church, the prayer service grew out of conversations had during the clergy’s bi-weekly gatherings, according to one member of the informal group, the Rev. Dr. Stephen Chapin Garner of The Congregational Church of New Canaan. “There’s no agenda other than recognizing that there’s a way to disagree without being disagreeable, be in conversation where we can be honest and robust and not back down from our commitments but also not vilify the other [side],” Garner told NewCanaanite.com. 

“It’s nothing other than, we are going to get together to pray for the town, and if anyone wants to show up to join us, they can, too,” he said.