Dale K. Bennett

Dale K. Bennett (19 Sept 1943 — 16 Sept 2026), a writer, journalist and deacon, was born Dale Joyce Koch (pronounced "cook") in Pittsburgh but grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan. Her father, Guy Samuel Koch, was a general contractor, and her mother, Grace Silbaugh Koch, was a quality control supervisor at Kellogg's. After graduating from Battle Creek High School she moved to New York City and earned a BA from Columbia University College of General Studies. After a brief marriage to the late Patrick V. Peppe, a Latin American studies professor, she earned an MA in American Studies from Yale before switching to journalism and obtaining a Master's from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1976.

In 1973 she married physicist Charles H. Bennett and they lived in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, for several years parenting the teen-age son of relatives on Charles's side. While in Croton, Dale worked as a reporter and eventually Night City Editor for Westchester Rockland Newspapers and served one summer as head of Croton's renowned Shakespeare Festival, remaining close to the Bennett family after her divorce from Charles in 1986. Around 1990 she moved to Oak Park, Illinois to take a writing job with an IBM subsidiary and was ordained as an Episcopal deacon. After her mother's death in 2006, Dale moved back to Battle Creek and served as Deacon in St. Thomas's Episcopal Church until her retirement in 2018. In 2019 Dale moved into assisted living in Corning and then Ithaca, NY, to be near her niece Jessica Bennett Woodhouse and Jessica’s children Sacha and Zoe, finally transitioning to memory care, and after further physical decline, to Cayuga Nursing Home, where she died in hospice three days before her 83rd birthday.

Dale's compassionate heart, and a voracious mind that she once described as "naturally curly", suffused her sermons and articles, for example one about how every journalist's least favorite task — interviewing neighbors after a suicide — felt when she experienced it as the neighbor rather than the journalist. In private life, her quick sense of humor generated a torrent of aphorisms and one-liners that those who knew her will remember and pass on.

Dale was predeceased by her father, her mother and her brother Dean Buyce, and is survived by her brother Kurt Koch and his wife Sandy, her sisters Carol Weaver and Lavonne Swegles, as well her Bennett-Woodhouse relatives Barbara, Jessica, Sacha, Zoe, Ken, Laura, Alison, Charles H. and Victorine. A funeral will be held at St. Thomas's Episcopal Church (269-965-2244) later this fall at a date to be decided and will be streamed for those unable to attend in person.

Additionally, if you would like to join a Zoom session to share memories of Dale, please contact Barbara (barbarabennettwoodhouse@gmail.com) or Charles H. (chdbennett@gmail.com) for details.