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Obituary

Family matron was concerned citizen

A member of a prominent family, Sheila Bender, who died Aug. 4, was confrontational but congenial with Pinellas Park city officials.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published August 14, 2005

PINELLAS PARK - Paul Bender and his son Ronald contemplate the eastern wall of their living room.

Right now, the wall's blank, but after renovations it will house the ashes of the family's matriarch, Sheila Bender, who died Aug. 4. She was 66.

Mrs. Bender, a member of two of Pinellas Park's premier families, had been ill off and on for several years with various maladies, including diabetes and respiratory problems.

"She was a little lady with a big heart," Ronald Bender said Friday. No matter what a person needed, Mrs. Bender would provide it, including hugs, he said.

Mrs. Bender was born in 1939 into the Wiggins family, whose members helped settle parts of north Florida. Her uncle was Charley Johns, who served as Florida's acting governor after the death in 1953 of Gov. Dan McCarty. Her grandfather, Mac Wiggins, was Pinellas Park's first police chief.

As a child, one of her babysitters was the man who would become U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores.

She married Paul Bender, a descendant of one of Pinellas Park's founding families. The first Benders moved to the area in 1896.

"My grandfather's was the first house to be built in Pinellas Park," Paul Bender said.

Times were tough for the Benders when they married in the mid 1950s during the Eisenhower administration. The couple made money mowing lawns. Eventually Mrs. Bender went to work for E Systems where she spent 15 years wiring circuit boards that were used on space capsules for the Mercury and Apollo programs.

She retired from there, but not for long. She was soon helping establish softball in the city as part of her duties as athletic director for the local Salvation Army.

The program, said her son Ronald, "kept many people off the streets, many kids."

Throughout the years, Mrs. Bender became more involved in civic affairs, an interest she kept up to the end of her life.

The most obvious evidence of that interest was the 14 years she spent on the Pinellas Park Code Enforcement Board where, her son said, she tried to pass on common sense, understanding and a sense of proportion.

She understood, he said, that sometimes people just couldn't get their grass cut, and that policing the height of lawns too closely was "petty."

She also served as a Neighborhood Watch captain, driving the streets of her Fairlawn neighborhood to make sure everyone was safe.

But she was perhaps best known among the city's elected officials for speaking her mind and getting in their faces.

"She'd tell you if you were right," Ronald Bender said. "She'd tell you if you were wrong."

Just weeks before she died, her husband said Mrs. Bender tangled with Mayor Bill Mischler.

"He kind of got snippy with her," Bender said. "She got right back in his face."

But despite her quick tongue, Pinellas Park elected officials said Mrs. Bender would be missed.

She was a wonderful lady, council member Patricia Bailey-Snook said.

And council member Rick Butler, whom she used to chase out of her yard when he was a mischief-loving child, said, "She was one of the matriarchs of Pinellas Park."

Mrs. Bender is survived by her husband of 51 years, Paul; three sons, Paul W., St. Petersburg, and Ronald W. and Brian A., both of Pinellas Park; a daughter, Cheryl A. Carder, Pinellas Park; a brother, Charles Jacobs, St. Petersburg; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

A week or so before Mrs. Bender died, she referred to a story she'd heard about developers buying graveyards and moving the bodies. She asked her husband, "That won't happen to me, will it?"

"I said, "No, you're going to come home,' " Mr. Bender said Friday. "So I did what she wanted, I brought her home."

And until they renovate the living room, Mrs. Bender's ashes sit in a bronze box with a plaque showing a guardian angel watching over two children. By the box are an angel, a bell and two roses, her three favorite things. They're all on a pedestal, opposite her husband's chair.

"She's on the pedestal where she belongs," he said.

[Last modified August 14, 2005, 00:53:19]