Life Story: Everett’s John Benedetto, a musician who played for soldiers in war, veterans in peace

EVERETT — John Benedetto played in a U.S. Army band during World War II. One of eight children — each of the five brothers served in a different branch of the armed forces — he was part of the 42nd Infantry “Rainbow” Division that helped liberate Europe from the Nazis.

When the war ended, Benedetto’s music didn’t stop.

He played in bands most of his life. Long ago in the Army, he played a trumpet. Later, for fraternal groups and senior centers, he played his keyboard.

When he was almost 80, a sign at Everett’s Veterans of Foreign Wars hall invited people in to “dance with Bene every Friday.”

John “Bene” Benedetto died July 5. The longtime Everett man was 89.

The oldest son in an Italian-American family from Maine, he was a teenager when his father died. He helped put food on the table with paper route earnings, then joined the Army at 17.

“He was the patriarch of the family,” said Jimmie Lee Benedetto, John Benedetto’s son.

He was born Feb. 6, 1922 in Chisholm, Maine, to Fiorindo and Erminia DiBenedetto. He was preceded in death by his parents, his wife Faye Jean Benedetto, his son John Robert Benedetto and five siblings.

He is survived by his wife Elise, children Jimmie Lee and Bonnie Jean, brothers Anthony and William Benedetto, and by five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Anthony Benedetto, who lives in St. Cloud, Fla., recalled visiting Everett and hearing his brother play at the VFW. His keyboard selections were heavy on nostalgia from the Big Band era. He said that music was important in their childhood home in Livermore Falls, Maine.

Another brother, William Benedetto, said that after their father died in the mid-1930s, the paper route was passed down from sibling to sibling and became a major source of income.

“We kept that paper route up until the 1950s,” said William Benedetto, of Wilsonville, Ore. “Our mother was tough as nails. She had to be. Thank God that paper route became our salvation,” he said.

Interviewed for a Veterans Day article in 2001, John Benedetto said he joined the Army as a musician. He spent the war years playing the horn, first in stateside USO clubs jammed with soldiers. “Overseas, with the military fighting on the lines, we were playing for their morale,” he said in 2001. He was a sergeant when his military career ended in 1945.

“All five of us were in different branches,” said Anthony Benedetto, who was in the Navy. William Benedetto spent 26 years in the Coast Guard. Their late brother Ralph was in the Marine Corps 20 years, and served in Korea. And Fiorindo, named after their father and also deceased, was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War.

Livermore Falls was a company town where many worked for the International Paper Co. Anthony Benedetto said his brother tried mill work, but didn’t like working nights. After taking a civil service exam, John Benedetto began working for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Jimmie Lee Benedetto said his father met his future wife Faye Jean in Muskogee, Okla., while with the bureau. John Benedetto moved many times with the federal agency, eventually bringing his family to the Northwest in the mid-1960s. He retired from the agency in 1983 after 41 years.

The BIA took the family to many towns, and Jimmie Lee Benedetto said he attended nine schools.

“He kept a band going, except in North Carolina where there was no place to play. There he played the organ in the Catholic church at Sunday Mass,” he said.

“He was a strict dad, a typical true old Italian,” Jimmie Lee Benedetto said. “We’d go to Mass every Sunday, and Catholic school wherever there was one. He really wanted all of his children to succeed, and for all of us to attend college.” And they all earned college degrees, he said.

“He really loved his music,” said Jimmie Lee Benedetto, who became a drummer and music teacher.

A card at his father’s memorial service at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Everett listed all the clubs where Benedetto had played music.

“Bellingham to Tacoma, each place he’d played, the Elks and senior centers, it went on and on,” Jimmie Lee Benedetto said. “If they needed a band, Dad was there to play.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.