Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Features

A love story's final chapter

Helen Benito didn't buy part of her marriage vow, the one about till death do you part.

By TOM SCHERBERGER
Published May 20, 2006

Mrs. Benito, a Tampa native who died on May 8 after a three-year battle with cancer, was married to Louis Benito for 50 years until his death in 1993. She never remarried. The thought never crossed her mind.

Her death was painful to her family and many friends, but they are comforted by the thought that she is finally reunited with her one and only love. The Benitos were my friends. When Mr. Benito died 13 years ago, I wrote about their extraordinary relationship. Here's that story.

- TOM SCHERBERGER, Times staff writer

*   *   *

Louis Benito was a 29-year-old bachelor on weekend leave from the Army when he walked into a tea dance in Ybor City and changed his life forever. He fell in love that summer Sunday with an 18-year-old girl from West Tampa named Helen Canedo.

This son of a cigarmaker would go on to become the head of one of Florida's largest advertising agencies, a confidante to governors and an admired leader of his community.

But it was the love story that began on the dance floor of Centro Espanol that day in 1943 that is the most remarkable part of this most remarkable man.

From the moment they met, there was no other man in her life. And for the next 50 years, there was no other woman for him.

She put aside the thoughts she had of entering a convent. And he forgot all about bachelorhood.

The next day Benito returned to Camp Blanding, near Gainesville. But Helen, or "Nuchi" as he came to call her, was never far from his thoughts. "He wrote me every day," she recalls.

Their courtship continued, by mail and during his weekend furloughs. They married on Nov. 19, 1944, at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in West Tampa, Helen's parish.

Their devotion to the church was important. "I wanted a good man, I wanted an honest man and I wanted a man who would worship with me," she says.

She got all of that and more in Louis Benito.

Theirs was a traditional marriage - he brought home the money, she took care of the home - but hardly a traditional romance.

On the day they married, he gave her a compact as a wedding present. On the 19th day of the next month, he gave her another wedding present. And the month after that and the month after that.

This would continue for the next 49 years. On the 19th of every month, he gave her a present to mark their wedding anniversary. He never missed a month. When he was out of town, he would call her to tell where he had hidden the present.

As the years passed and their seven children grew, he would ask one of his daughters to buy the present for him. Helen knew this, of course, and he knew she knew. "We never let on," she says. "It was our little joke."

Louis Benito started his own advertising agency in 1954, but he never lost his sense of who he was, where he came from and what his priorities were. He believed strongly in honesty, integrity, love and devotion.

"He was so sweet in his devotion," Helen Benito says. "And he never said one unkind word to me. Never. We never had words. I have to admit, I really tried to please him, I really did. I waited on him hand and foot. But I didn't mind. I loved him."

He would call her twice a day, even when he was out of town. "He never once came home and said he had a bad day at the office," she says.

She was lucky, she knows, but "he was the one who was always telling me how lucky he was. Sometimes, I even felt guilty how much he loved me. He told me 'I love you' so many times."

Every day, he would tell her, "I love you very much."

"Sometimes, he would say, 'Nuchi, I don't know if I've told you enough today how much I love you.' I always felt that he would wake up in the morning and wonder, 'What can I do to make Nuchi happy today?' "

Louis Benito died Sunday morning surrounded by his family and friends.

"Toward the end," Helen Benito says, "he would tell me, 'Helen, I can't believe someone could be this happy.' "

Ten days before he died, he lay in his hospital bed, aching from the pain. It was Feb. 18th, the day before their monthly anniversary. Even in pain, his thoughts were not far from his wife.

"Do you have the present?" he asked one of his daughters. "It's right here," she said. He nodded.

The next day Helen Benito opened what would be her last wedding present, a small bottle of perfume. "I told him how much I liked it," she recalls. "He smiled and went back to sleep."

Word for Word is an occasional feature excerpting passages of interest from books, magazines, Web sites and other sources. The text may be edited for space but the original spelling, grammar and punctuation are unchanged.

[Last modified May 20, 2006, 08:04:08]