The Observer, January 2007
Volunteer Profile: Ordinary citizen has a voice on council committee
By SUSAN SOMMER
Project Manager
Jo Ann Benda, a member of the council’s Terminal Operations and Environmental Monitoring Committee, still vividly recalls flying over Prince William Sound two months after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. “It seemed as if a child had used a black crayon and circled the islands,” she says. She never wants to see that again.
Her concern for the environment is simple: keep it safe for future generations.
Jo Ann Benda serves on the Terminal Operations and Environmental Monitoring Committee.
As a teacher for more than 40 years, Jo Ann’s passion is seeing people succeed. The latter half of those years has been spent in Valdez, teaching developmental education at Prince William Sound Community College. Her desire for a healthy environment reflects her love of Valdez and all it offers—friendly neighbors, natural beauty, and no stop lights.
Unfortunately, according to Jo Ann, its semi-remote location also means there’s no Nordstrom, her favorite store.
During the 1989 spill, Jo Ann showered her husband, Bob Benda, with questions about the disaster and its implications. Bob was a science teacher at the community college then, but also worked on the spill response for a state agency. He later joined the citizens’ council as a member of the Terminal Operations and Environmental Monitoring Committee, or TOEM, and is now its chair. Jo Ann began to sit in on committee meetings as a visitor a few months before she officially joined in 2002.
Reducing and monitoring pollution caused by routine terminal and tanker operations is the committee’s main focus.
“I consider myself the ‘ordinary citizen’ who can ask perhaps silly questions since my background is not engineering or science,” Jo Ann says. By not focusing on the technical aspects of tanker and terminal operations, this wife, mother, and grandmother brings a down-to-earth, human perspective to issues the committee works on. She may not be able to explain complex chemical test methods or emissions modeling statistics, but she can tell you how air pollution from the tanker terminal or another spill in the Sound might affect her immediate family, all Valdez residents.
Says Jo Ann, “I have the basic knowledge and experience of once living and traveling in unhealthy environments and do not want my grandchildren to share that experience.”
Having grown up in steel mill country in East Chicago, Indiana, Jo Ann saw pollution firsthand. “I remember sitting outside with my mom on the porch when metallic flakes started to fall from the sky, covering my black slacks. She said it happened everyday around 4 p.m., that it was something the steel mills let off.”
Michigan and South Dakota have also been home to Jo Ann, and she spent two years living and teaching in Kisumu, Kenya. The people there were poor, she says, but extremely kind.
Jo Ann has explored many other parts of the world for work and pleasure, too: Hawaii, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Canada, Central America, and the Netherlands. Memorable moments include being charged by a bull elephant in Kenya, and landing in Nairobi the same day an airliner hijacking and hostage rescue mission affected that city’s airport. Closer to home, she enjoys playing with her granddaughter and grandson, taking photos, cooking, gardening, and running Chili Bean, her Akita-husky mix. One of her photos made it onto the cover of the town’s phone book several years ago.
Jo Ann’s also an avid reader. “What else would you expect from a reading specialist?” she says with a smile. All genres interest her, from historical novels, to other types of fiction, to nonfiction.
Teaching developmental education, which includes courses such as college success skills, reading, and fundamental writing, “is the kind of job people dream of in that it is so rewarding when one is being paid to play,” Jo Ann says. “I never considered teaching as work; it is something I have always wanted to do since going home from first grade and retelling everything that happened that day to my younger sister.”
Her enthusiasm is backed by education: a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, a master’s in learning disabilities and reading, and post graduate studies in reading. Jo Ann developed the Learning Resource Center for Prince William Sound Community College and is active in various academic testing programs.
College for Jo Ann had its lighter moments, like when her picture was submitted to Playboy magazine by mischievous sorority sisters. Jo Ann thought it was all a joke until she received several calls from the magazine encouraging her to be a bunny.
Now, as a teacher of college students, she’s sure that if there were another oil spill in the Sound, attendance in her classes would dwindle as many students would be lured by high wages of spill response work. Jo Ann hopes that’s a choice they won’t ever have to make.