Shirley Mae Benedict's Obituary
Shirley Mae Benedict died on October 26, 2025, in Westerville, age 92. She was born on February 27, 1933, in the farming community of Westhope, Henry County, Ohio, to Glenn and Leona (née Nichols) Pittman, the second eldest of five children (one of whom died in infancy). The family moved to Richwood, Union County, in the mid-1930s. Shirley often made the academic honor roll from grade school through high school, performed in many school plays and musicals as well as piano recitals, played snare drum in the high school marching band, and was a member of the National Honor Society, graduating from Richwood High School in 1951. The senior class took a trip to Washington, DC. After high school, Shirley enrolled at the Office Training School in Columbus, thereafter landing a secretarial job as a stenographer with the Columbus engineering firm Burgess & Niple, where, as luck would have it, a civil engineer named Ned Benedict also worked. They started dating and fell in love, marrying on September 12, 1954, in Richwood. Initially they continued living in Columbus but then moved to Westerville in 1957. Their son, Tod, was born in 1958, and their daughter, Amy, was born four years later. In 1965 the family moved to Washington state, where Ned’s parents and brother and his family lived, near Seattle. However, Shirley soon grew homesick for the Buckeye State, and the following year they moved back to Ohio, returning to Westerville and purchasing another home that they shared for just six days shy of 50 years before Ned died in 2016.
Shirley resolved to learn how to swim in her late thirties after she tipped over while canoeing with her family and thinking she was “drowning” in a foot of water of the Mohican River near Loudonville, so she took lessons and became a proficient swimmer. She loved to read, took yoga classes, went swimming at the Westerville Athletic Club, and volunteered at Children’s Hospital. She also did secretarial work at Otterbein College in the Dean of Students office in the 1970s. Family vacations included trips to Mackinac Island, Michigan; Fontana Village in the hills of western North Carolina; and the Seattle, Washington, area (including going to the 1962 World’s Fair there), among many other destinations. Shirley loved dogs, and during their nearly 62-year marriage she and Ned had an English bulldog named Chim and then three beagles: Heidi, Claire, and Josie.
Shirley was predeceased by her parents, her husband, and two siblings, Lila Moore and Bonnie Pittman. She is survived by two younger siblings, Donn Pittman of Charleston, South Carolina, and Colleen Brosnan of Phoenix, Arizona; her two children, Tod (Jackie) Benedict of West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Amy (Ashley) Taylor of Gahanna, Ohio; four nieces and nephews; four grandchildren—Tod and Jackie’s daughters, Hannah (Brendan) Balent and Madison (Alex) Acevedo, and Amy and Ashley’s daughter, Natalie (Adam) Mickey, and son, Evan Taylor; and three great-grandchildren, all of whom she loved spending time with.
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