TOMS RIVER – If you didn’t like Don Bennett, it probably meant you did something bad.
If you were a politician who took advantage of your station, Don was there to knock you down a peg.
If you were a public figure who got caught lying, Don would remember exactly what you said, and reprint if for all to see.
A journalist for decades, and a giant in covering local news, Donald J. Bennett died at home on March 5 at 84.
“Never argue with someone who buys ink by the gallon!” That’s what he’d say if some public official wanted to fight with the newspaper. He always won because he kept copious notes.
A reporter is a somewhat-public figure. And when a public figure dies, journalists often write an article about them, and that’s what this is. Journalists will often pull from their obituary for this story. You can find it here: dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/toms-river-nj/donald-bennett-12771608
I learned a lot that I didn’t know from reading that obituary, but I’m not going to quote it. I’m going to do something that he would have hated: use the first person point of view to talk about him.
I worked with him for a few years at The Ocean County Observer. Our office was in downtown Toms River, where WOBM is now. My desk was caddy corner from his. We were all in these gray, dull cubicle-like things with half walls separating us.
By the time I joined the paper, Don had settled into a routine of covering county government and all its strengths and weaknesses.
One of the regular things he wrote was transcribing all the marriages and divorces that were recorded. Can you imagine that?
If you read a news article, they always start with a place name all in capital letters. That’s called the dateline, in the biz, although it should probably be called the “placeline.” Anyway, he would always use specific areas of town. If something happened in Forked River, the dateline would be FORKED RIVER, while the rest of us would just write LACEY. Do you know where “Nugentown” is? Don did. That speaks to his love of history.
His father, John R. Bennett, was the superintendent of Toms River schools for a number of years. That big bubble near Intermediate East is named after him. That’s where Don got his love of learning.
Every newsroom has one old, grumpy guy. At JerseyShoreOnline.com, that old, grumpy guy is me. But although Don had certainly seen enough to make him cynical, he still had a healthy outlook on life.
When he argued about national politics with someone, there wasn’t the venom that you’d expect. It was a sparring match and they both enjoyed it. When he talked about some stupid thing a politician did, he’d roll his eyes but his blood pressure certainly wouldn’t go up.
It made it easier to ask him for advice – and I did. I still felt a little intimidated by him, to be honest.
When he caught an error he let you know, in his own sardonic way. We had an inter-computer messaging system and I remember referring to Washington Street in downtown Toms River as Washington Avenue. He wrote to me “It’s Washington Street – not avenue. You can see it from your desk.”)
But he was quick to celebrate your success as well. I covered the big Halloween Parade one year and did a very unusual take on it. He not only complimented me through that messaging service but made sure all my superiors at the company knew I had done a good job.
There was one time that he had to come in on a Sunday, during my usual shift, because a notable figure in Ocean County had passed away. He knew them well, of course. He knew anyone who did a lot in the county. He had to do what I’m doing now. I wrote up some of it but he did the personal stuff, so I put his name on the article when I filed it. He was very upset that we didn’t share the byline.
I guess I’m learning as I write this that Don told you exactly who you were. If you were a scam artist, he’d let the world know. If you did the right thing, he’d also let the world know.
Don was on the ground floor when people started seeing how disastrous the Ciba-Geigy pollution really was. He was interviewed in Don Fagin’s book about that (“Toms River: A Story Of Science And Salvation”),which won a Pulitzer. I’m sure he provided a lot of research for it.
Another national story is when Laurel Hester, a lieutenant with the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, was dying of cancer in 2006. She wanted her benefits to be passed on to her partner. The county didn’t have the legal mechanism to pass benefits to a same-sex partner. More importantly, the politicians running the county didn’t want to change their rules to allow it. Eventually the politicians were shamed into letting it happen.
The documentary about her struggle, “Freeheld” (named after what the county leaders were called at the time – freeholders) won an Academy Award. It’s definitely worth a watch. The story was also turned into a drama a bit later. In that fictionalized version, Bennett is played by the same actor who played Karl Rove in a movie about Valerie Plame.
Once in a while I’d run into him after his retirement while I was covering Toms River and we’d have a few laughs. He probably couldn’t believe that the funny kid who covered the Seaside Heights Clown Parade 20 years ago was now the news editor of seven weekly papers.
He taught me how to write about town budgets, which are very complicated. To this day, I still have the document he gave me that shows how to do it. I give my own version of it to my writers. I’ve got freelancers and interns now, and some of them have benefited from Don Bennett’s trickle-down knowledge.
He’s won awards, and he’s a hall of famer, but I think what he’d really like is to be immortalized in print, in a newspaper.
A visitation will be held at Anderson & Campbell Funeral Home, 703 Main Street, Toms River, NJ 08753, on Sunday, March 8, 2026, from 1 p.m. until the funeral service at 4:30 p.m.
According to his obituary, donations may be made to one of Don’s favorite charitable organizations in his honor. The Carter Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are two organizations that have been near and dear to Donald’s heart.
