As I begin my tenure as the new TVSD President, I want to take this time to offer a great big Thank You to Marilyn Bente for the wonderful job she did as our President for the past two and one half years. Because of her dedication and leadership, TVSD is strong and having a significant, positive impact on the lives of our members. Her love of this organization is evidenced by her willingness to continue to serve on our Board of Directors as our Immediate Past President.

Under Marilyn’s leadership, the Board has been busy implementing the strategic plan approved by the Board in November, 2022. The first significant accomplishment was the successful search for a part time business manager. We hired Terri Gilbreth on May 8, 2023, and she has already had a significant impact on our successes. She, in tandem with our hard working Cassandra, are helping guide the Board through new territories. We are truly fortunate to have this team sharing their time and skills with TVSD.

This is a good opportunity for me to share some of our activities and accomplishments. Terri has been working on locating and applying for grants to enhance our fund raising activities. Our exercise programs have expanded in response to the increasing demand by our members. As we continue to explore how we can offer more of our activities in ADA compliant locations, we succeeded in gaining access to the Tierrasanta Recreation Center for our new Thai Chi classes. We hope to expand our use of this facility.

We continue to strengthen our marketing program under the able leadership of Cassandra. An important part of growing our membership and increasing our income sources is expanding our community connections. By participating in the recent series of concerts in the park, the craft fair and Tierrafest, we are becoming better known in the community. We will continue to take advantage of similar opportunities.

We have developed a Supporting Partner program that will be launched in January, 2024. We hope this initiative will create more partnerships within the community and raise funds to support our programming. The Board put together a design team who worked closely with our Information Technology committee to modernize and upgrade aspects of our website. We will continue to research and take advantage of new technologies and software to enhance and streamline our operations.

Our efforts to grow our membership is going very well. In the past eighteen months, we have added 32 new members (an average of 1.8 per month)! We are currently at about 132 members. In order to maximize the benefits of your membership, the Board strongly recommends everyone get involved. We offer so many ways to become active and to meet your neighbors. We are a neighbor helping neighbor group. We care about others, so please find your passion, enjoy your membership: get involved.  Thank you!

Ken Ross

Dick Benton was an army brat. Even though born in the army hospital in the Bronx, he claims to be from Brooklyn because, while his dad was stationed in Germany, Dick and his mom lived there with her parents. When he was 18 months old, he and his mom joined his dad in Germany, and after that did the typical moving around of service families. Dick’s dad retired in 1961 when he was stationed in New York City, the same year that Dick graduated from high school in Brooklyn.

The family moved to New Hampshire, where Dick attended UNH where he majored in mechanical engineering and also participated in their ROTC program. He joined the US Air Force and was able to pursue his master’s degree as his first active-duty assignment. After that, Dick went where the Air Force sent him: Sacramento, the east coast of Florida, the Gulf coast of Florida, and the Boeing Company in Seattle. His final duty was at Los Angeles Air Force Station in El Segundo, from where he retired in 1989. From 1989 to 1991, he was a deputy state fire marshal, after which he took the position of UC San Diego Fire Marshal, from which he retired in 2006.

Dick had met his future wife, LuAnn, in 1989, as a result of his involvement in “Young At Heart,” an organization for young people with arthritis. He had been attracted to LuAnn by her radiant smile and asked the group leader to ask LuAnn if Dick could call her. She agreed, he did, and things progressed from then. They were married in December, 1990. As he says: “A definite silver lining to the dark cloud of arthritis!” 

 When Dick and LuAnn had moved to San Diego for the job at UCSD, they chose to live in Tierrasanta to be near a close friend Dick thought of as “the older brother I never had”. After borrowing his friend’s RV and discovering the joys of RV-ing, Dick and LuAnn bought their own and enjoyed almost 20 years of traveling “to the four corners of the US and Canada”. Dick finally sold their RV in 2016, and he and LuAnn have been enjoying road trips and cruises since then. They’re planning on a European river cruise in June – from Amsterdam to Budapest.

Dick has a daughter and a granddaughter from a previous marriage, and Dick and LuAnn have numerous nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews, and great-great nieces and great-great nephews on LuAnn’s side.

Dick has always loved helping others. During his college years and all of his assign­ments in the Air Force (except for when he was stationed in LA) he was a volunteer fire fighter and EMT. Dick is now a volunteer in the Jewish Family Service “Fix-It” program, and would like to be known in our Time Bank as “Tinkerer-in-Chief” – willing to try to fix just about anything. He’ll also install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, or even do a safety check in our members’ homes. He is currently volunteering at Vista Grande Elementary School in their Everyone-A-Reader program; at Mira Mesa Library, he is a weekly storyteller; while at the Mission Valley branch library, he helps with their holiday activities for kids. He is an avid reader and has developed a database to keep track of all the books he has read. He also enjoys model railroading, photography, and computers.

At Octoberfest a year ago, LuAnn and Dick met Cassandra and learned more about TVSD than they had already heard from a few friends. They joined TVSD because they were interested in making more friends in the area. They have enjoyed activities like Fun and Games, Casino Night, and the Cornhole Tournament, and Dick planned a recent TVSD outing to the San Diego Gem and Mineral Show (an event directed by LuAnn, Vice President of the San Diego Mineral and Gem Society), as well as being quite active in our Time Bank.

Dick’s words to live by: “Whatever you’re doing, look for opportunities to introduce some humor into these days when we have so little of it.”