President Clinton -- Joe Benton Dies, Believer In Community

No one could doubt Joe Benton's passion for his community. Even if they didn't share his views. He was not one to talk much about his personal life or his own accomplishments. But when it came to development of the Central Area, he made his views known. As the first president of the Urban Business Association, a group of Central Area business owners, Mr. Benton, who owned and operated Custom Cherry Cleaners on East Cherry Street, was solidly behind a successful community effort a few years ago for improved street lighting in high-crime neighborhoods. Mr. Benton, a longtime Central Area resident, died Friday (Sept. 11) from complications of a stroke he suffered two years ago. He was 71. For more than three decades, long before Seattle's Department of Community Development issued a Seattle investment guide on the Central Area in 1989, Mr. Benton had been promoting the community as an area of expanding markets, increasing public and private investment, affordable housing, and growing population and homeownership. "I've always known this is a good, good community to have a business in and live in," he once told a reporter. As a longtime Central Area resident, Mr. Benton built up a solid community base at his family-run tailoring shop, which he opened in the late 1940s when there were few black-owned businesses in the city. The business got its start in a small Jackson Street storefront near the International District. In the early 1950s, Mr. Benton, who trained here as a tailor, followed the branching out of a growing black population, and moved his shop north, becoming a cleaners. And with its new location, in the 2500 block of East Cherry Street, the cleaners acquired its name. Born on Independence Day, 1927, in Chattanooga, Tenn., Mr. Benton served in the U.S. Army after graduation from high school and was eventually stationed at Fort Lawton in Seattle. Family members said his interest in tailoring was formed when he and others worked sewing patches on uniforms outside the base. After an honorable discharge, he studied tailoring for two years at Edison Technical School. But he was denied membership in the local tailoring union - he always felt it was because of his race - and worked as a tailor in his own business at the same time he worked as a psychiatric nurse at the Veteran's Administration Hospital. He opened his first small dry-cleaning business on East Cherry in 1959. "When he did something, he just did it. He didn't like to talk about it," said his wife, Vera, who along with their son Chip Benton of Seattle also worked at the cleaners. His son added, "He was always low-profile." Also surviving are three other children from a previous marriage, Joe Benton Jr. of Columbia, S.C., Belinda Williams of Fairbanks, Alaska, and Joneene Walton of Seattle, and 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He also is survived by three sisters, Elizabeth Zachary and Mary Florence Custer, both of Chattanooga, Rose Delmarge of Philadelphia, and one brother, Clarence Benton Jr., of Seattle. A Rose Croix service will be tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Dayspring & Fitch Funeral Directors, 5503 Rainier Ave. S. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Cherry Hill Baptist Church, 22nd Avenue and East Cherry Street. Burial will be Monday at the Tahoma National Cemetery near Covington.