GEORGE BENSON • VIETNAM WAR
George Benson, 70
Gloucester, MA
Born 12/4/1955
Born/Raised: Gloucester/Various, MA
Service: US Navy
Rank: Petty Officer 3d Class
Dates of Service: 1973-1976
George Benson, born in Gloucester, was going to high school in Methuen in 1973 when he turned 17. The ongoing product of the foster care system, George and all his seven brothers and sisters were taken into care and placed either in foster homes or orphanages. His parents John Colby Benson and Jenny Lane were incapable of caring for them properly. George, the last of the children, was six months old when the state took him. He guesses he was raised in 5-7 homes before he left school and his last foster home in Methuen at 17 to join the Navy in 1973.
When he joined the Navy, he wanted to be a cook and the Navy obliged, assigning him first aboard the USS Newman K. Perry, a destroyer. He was reassigned in 1975 until the end of his service in 1976.
“I more feel for my brothers.” His brother Rusty was with the 101st Airborne and the recipient of a Bronze Star in 1969 but died of small cel lung cancer after exposure to Agent Orange, and another brother Tommy was in heavy artillery also with the US Army in 1970.
When he returned in 1976 he burned everything he had that had to do with Vietnam – his discharge papers, his uniform, all because of all the guys they left behind. He did return to Methuen however and finished his studies to get his high school diploma. He met a girl, got married. It didn’t work out and he headed off to Reno, Nevada among other places. In 1983 he was back in Gloucester and has been here since.
He met Dawn Burfoot and married her in 1989 and three years later they had their son, Dylan Benson, now a Gloucester City Councilor. George continued his cooking career working at Captains Courageous, The Easterly, and the Hancock House. He’s been a landscaper, a carpenter and for the past 25 years a clammer.