Marietta is mourning a 59-year-old city planning commissioner and avid outdoorsman who died while fishing in Montana on Monday.
Speaking on behalf of the family, Tom Giddens described his longtime friend Brent Bennett as “a man’s man who lived life to the fullest.”
Bennett, who worked as a commercial plumber, leaves behind a wife of 34 years and two adult daughters.
Bennett was fishing with two friends Monday afternoon when he fell trying to cross Rock Creek and was swept away, according to The Billings Gazette in Montana.
Giddens, 62, said Bennett bought a vacation home in Montana with a friend within the past couple years.
“He was too good of an outdoorsman for me to think that’d happen,” Giddens said.
The Associated Press reported that Montana rivers have been running high due to recent snowmelt.
“He got caught in the river and they found his body about a half-mile down the river,” said Andy Morris, the councilman for the ward that Bennett covered on the planning commission.
About 30 minutes later, one of Bennett’s friends found him and performed CPR, The Gazette reported. Bennett was taken to a clinic, where he died.
Morris said he knew him more than 20 years.
“He was like a brother,” Morris said as he got emotional Tuesday night. “He loved his community and everybody loved him.”
A small portion of that community regularly came together on Sunday nights about 7:30.
Iconic retired Marietta High School football coach James "Friday" Richards would open the Big Blue Gym at what is now Marietta Middle School and run a game of basketball for a group of notable names.
Whit Smith, 39, remembers being a kid messing around in the gym as his father Hap Smith and a law partner (now Marietta mayor) Steve Tumlin played ball with orthodontists and accountants and other professionals.
Then one day Bennett walked in. He’d moved in nearby and wondered why there were so many cars at the gym every Sunday.
At first, the commercial plumber didn’t get much playing time.
“He was the only plumber playing for sure,” Smith said of his friend.
But as the crowd got older, Bennett got tagged in more and eventually became an integral part of the game.
His friend Paul Conyngham remembers how good Bennett was on the court.
Conyngham said the group sometimes ballooned to 20, with two 5-on-5 games running at once.
He met Bennett about 30 years ago at a Ducks Unlimited meeting and they hit it off.
The 70-year-old said Bennett “knew more about the woods, hunting, fishing, than anyone I knew.”
Conyngham described Bennett — who studied engineering at Georgia Tech — as a man who built wooden boats, traveled to Europe with a rugby team and once hunted down what had to have been a 14-foot alligator.
Bennett may have been an athletic woodworker, hunter and plumber, but he was also a unicyclist. It was a skill he’d learned from his father.
“I’d just look at him and shook my head,” Conyngham said with a laugh.
Instead of flowers, the family asks contributions made to the Altamaha Riverkeeper or the Chesapeake Bay Retriever Relief & Rescue Fund, according to his obituary.
Visitation will be at 1 p.m. Friday, and there will be a service an hour later at First United Methodist Church of Marietta, 56 Whitlock Ave. NW.
A reception will be held after at Marietta Educational Garden Center at 505 Kennesaw Ave. in Marietta.
About the Author
