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Noah Benson isn't here to mark his birthday, but folks at a local shelter for women will honor him on his special day.
By JEANNE MALMGREN
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 1, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Today would have been Noah Benson's 17th birthday.
He probably would have celebrated with his family, his best buddy, perhaps a girlfriend. He would have been the life of the party, smiling and cracking jokes, maybe belting out a Broadway song to entertain everybody. For sure, he would have cooked his own birthday dinner -- a multicourse, gourmet feast.
Noah's not here, though. He died three years ago, a couple of days before he would have turned 14. It was one of those sudden, senseless deaths that seem particularly cruel because the person was so young and promising.
This week, the people who loved Noah mark both the anniversary of his death and his birthday. Sorrow and celebration intertwine. It's not an easy week.
Noah Benson was in eighth grade at Bay Point Middle School. He played saxophone in the school band and in a countywide jazz ensemble. He was pretty good in math and science, not so great in other subjects.
He was known for his exuberant grin and for ears that stuck out like mini-satellite dishes. Over the summer he had shot up to 6 feet. He wore size 13 shoes. The blond hair he'd had as a boy was darkening. You could see the young man he was becoming.
Noah, say the people who knew him, was surprisingly mature for his age. When a new kid showed up at school, he was the first one to introduce himself. He acted as peacemaker when his cousins argued. He befriended elderly neighbors.
"Just a really nice person to be around," recalled his father, Roger Benson, 52.
Noah was an only child. His parents divorced when he was 2. He lived with his father in a waterfront house in the "pink streets" area of St. Petersburg and frequently visited his mother, Patricia Hardy-Smith, at her condo on Tierra Verde. Noah had pets and bikes at both houses, two doting grandmothers and lots of friends. He traveled with both parents -- to New York City, Colorado, Europe and Costa Rica.
From a young age, he accompanied his dad on grocery shopping trips and learned to read food labels. Roger Benson, an amateur chef, taught his son how to prepare simple dishes. Noah sampled a variety of foods that most kids would shun: oysters, octopus, sushi. He also had a taste for Dunkin' Donuts -- "double Ds," he called them.
With his mom, Noah often hung out at Harvey's Fourth Street Grill.
"He was 5 years old, and he'd be helping bus tables," said Patricia Hardy-Smith, 41. "All the waitresses knew him. He'd go back in the kitchen and watch the chefs work."
Noah also was precocious when it came to thinking of others. Whenever his mother dropped off bundles of used clothing at the CASA women's shelter in St. Petersburg, Noah would donate toys he no longer played with. When he was 11, his best friend's father died. Noah baked a casserole and took it to the family.
Like any kid, he wasn't perfect. He always seemed to be late, and his school backpack was a disorganized jumble of papers. In the mornings, he stayed in the shower so long there was no hot water left.
In 1997, Noah had his bar mitzvah at Congregation Schaarai Zedek in Tampa. For his community service project, part of the bar mitzvah process, Noah decided to make a meal for the women and children living at CASA.
"He called up and said, 'My name is Noah, I'm 13 years old, and I'm a very good cook,' " recalled CASA employee Judy Lambdon.
On a Saturday night, Noah showed up at CASA bearing enough home-cooked food to feed 30 people. In the shelter's small kitchen, he reheated meat lasagna and garlic bread he had made at home. There also was salad and a chocolate cake. Noah put tablecloths and centerpieces on the long picnic-style tables.
The shelter residents and staff were amazed someone had gone to all this trouble.
"It was a real gift for them," Lambdon said. "From a 13-year-old boy."
Early in 1998, a month or two before he died, Noah got his first girlfriend. Her name was Dorothy Shipe. His first kiss was at her front door.
"I really, really liked him," recalled Shipe, now 17. "He would try to be funny all the time and sometimes his jokes weren't funny. But I laughed anyway."
On Valentine's Day, Noah invited Shipe for dinner at his mother's condo. He seasoned a pork tenderloin with fresh sage, boiled some new potatoes and tossed a huge salad. When Shipe arrived, he presented her with a handful of roses and a small box of Godiva chocolates.
"I was like, my heart was melting," Shipe said. "I still have those roses. I keep them in a box."
Two weeks later was Noah's 14th birthday. He and his mother, his uncle and his mother's boyfriend left for a cruise to the Bahamas.
"He was in hog heaven," Hardy-Smith said. "For a week he was going to eat whatever he wanted."
As the ship sailed out of port in Miami, Noah already had played cards with some new friends and sampled an afternoon buffet of cheese fondue and escargot.
Then the family started down to their cabins to get ready for dinner. Noah said he was having trouble breathing. He turned to go back up on deck for some fresh air. On the stairs, he collapsed.
Hardy-Smith says the ship's doctor worked on Noah for at least half an hour. His airway was so swollen that it completely closed. The doctor tried but could not insert a breathing tube. Hardy-Smith says the doctor did not perform a tracheotomy, an emergency procedure to create a breathing hole. As his mother and uncle stood by helplessly, Noah suffocated.
The ship docked at Key West, where the medical examiner performed an autopsy. The official cause of death was anaphylactic shock, a rapid allergic reaction -- usually to an insect sting or to something a person has ingested -- that can kill in minutes.
Noah had not been stung by an insect. He ate a wide variety of exotic foods in his life and had never had an adverse reaction to any of them, according to his parents.
The cruise company, Norwegian Cruise Lines, gave Noah's mother her money back. But she says the captain never offered condolences. There was no sympathy note, no flowers. Noah's parents are suing Norwegian Cruise Lines; the case is scheduled for trial this summer.
"Norwegian Cruise Line regrets the unfortunate incident which occurred," said spokeswoman Fran Sevcik. "Despite all efforts by NCL's medical staff, Noah Benson died. Norwegian Cruise Line has a policy not to discuss in detail matters currently in litigation." Neither Hardy-Smith nor Benson can remember details from the memorial service. Friends, relatives and classmates packed the funeral home chapel. Noah's jazz band played When the Saints Go Marching In. One after another, youngsters came to the microphone to say what Noah had meant to them.
In his eulogy, Rabbi Richard Birnholz called Noah "a man-child, a worldly person who had more interests and talents and insight than most of us adults will ever have in our lifetime."
In the hard months after Noah's death, his parents suffered. Hardy-Smith moved to a new house to escape the memories at her condo. Roger Benson ripped his house apart, taking down walls, replacing the plumbing and electrical wiring, putting on a new roof.
"It was very intense and very physical," Benson recalled. "I wore myself out."
Today the remodeling is still partly finished. Lumber is stacked in some rooms. Weeds have grown tall around the barbecue grill in the back yard, where Noah used to cook burgers. Benson, who runs his professional mediation business from his house, misses his roommate, his friend, his only son.
"At some point you feel as if you run out of tears," he said. "But the grieving just goes on. The thoughts (about Noah) come out of nowhere."
Hardy-Smith has the same problem. She keeps busy running Aerophoto, an aerial photography business in St. Petersburg, but the memories crop up.
"I'll see a kid who looks like Noah, or is dressed like he dressed, and that triggers it."
Hardy-Smith still struggles with guilt because she was the one who took him on the cruise. Only recently, as she prepares to testify at the trial, has she been able to read the autopsy report on Noah.
Both Hardy-Smith and Benson can't help thinking about what Noah would be like now.
"He was going to be a magnificent adult, caring and compassionate and full of life," said Hardy-Smith. "It is so unfair."
Noah wanted to take flying lessons someday. To attend culinary arts school and become a chef. Own a restaurant. He would call it B.J. Jams. He liked the jazzy sound of that name.
This morning, on his birthday, Noah's parents and a few friends will gather at the CASA shelter for a simple ceremony. The staff at CASA want to honor the young man who shared his compassion and his lasagna with them. They are naming the kitchen at the shelter after him.
St. Petersburg artist Susan Shapiro, a family friend, created a ceramic plaque in Noah's favorite colors, sky blue and turquoise. Handwritten script says "Noah's Kitchen." In the center is a photo of Noah, smiling his wide-open smile.
After the ceremony, CASA staffers will serve coffee and something sweet. Let's hope it's double Ds.