By Tom Davidson
FARRELL — From the dusty roads of rural Jim Crow Georgia to the ghetto of Detroit, and then on to Farrell and California, with other stops in between before coming back to the Shenango Valley more than a decade ago, Sadie R. Benham led an active, illustrious life.
She was a community leader, active in both local and national politics; a woman of faith, the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister and a life-long active church-goer. But perhaps most of all, she was a mother.
“A fountain of joy,” is how her daughter Jacqueline Walker remembered her Sunday, as they were finalizing funeral plans after Mrs. Benham was found dead Saturday morning in her Farrell home. She was 78.
“She loved God, she loved life, she lived well and she laughed a lot,” Mrs. Walker said.
Rozlind Wilson also had fond memories of her mother.
“I think of her as the ultimate role model,” Mrs. Wilson said. “She was just so forgiving, understanding and open. I learned a lot from her.”
Mrs. Benham chronicled her life in the self-published 2002 memoir “From Welfare to the White House, I Know Who Holds My Hand (The Sadie Benham Story)”
It details how she dealt with life’s ups and downs through faith in God and by keeping a positive outlook, something Mrs. Wilson said was always true of her mother.
She lived through racism in Georgia and hard times in a Detroit ghetto. She worked at a factory as a student, and in 1947 lost part of her right arm in an accident there.
She first came to the Shenango Valley when her first husband, George Jenkins, left the auto factories of Detroit for the steel mills of Farrell. After they divorced, she moved to California, where she became a player in local school politics, serving on the school board in a predominantly white Santa Ana district.
She operated her own daycare centers and was a champion of child care for poor, working single moms. She was also a foster mother and adopted three children later in life, after she returned to Farrell to be near her three grown daughters: Mrs. Walker, Mrs. Wilson and Gwendolyn Haynes.
She adopted Cherish, 19, Ricky-ayana, 18, both of whom are pursuing their adult lives, and nine-year-old Cachet.
She had served on the Farrell School Board since 2002.
“She did everything she could to make sure our students were well taken care of in our district,” board Vice President Terry Harrison said. “She will be greatly missed. Those will be some hard shoes to fill.”
Fellow board member Ronald Weston echoed Harrison’s sentiments and added: “Mrs. Benham was a fine lady. She was a stickler for education. She was an outstanding lady.”
In addition to being active in school politics both in Farrell and in California, Mrs. Benham was a three-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She was received at the Carter White House in the late 1970s, and served as a volunteer when Barack Obama accepted the nomination at the Democratic convention in Denver. Mrs. Benham also took several Shenango Valley children with her for the living history lesson.
Mrs. Benham and Mrs. Wilson were among the locals who went to Washington in January to watch as Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African-American president.
It’s something Mrs. Benham didn’t mind standing several hours on the National Mall to witness, Mrs. Wilson said.
“Never in my lifetime would I have expected a black president,” Mrs. Benham told The Herald afterward. “Nothing compares to being able to look out and see all those people from every nation and every creed.
“I think it’s really a turning point,” she said.
