PROFILE
Bill and Barbara Benac's Pathway for Disadvantaged Children
RETIREMENTS
AFTER BILL BENAC retired from a career in finance in 2016, he and his wife Barbara have continued to play an active role in their Dallas community and elsewhere in the world. Bill (BA German Literature, ’71) is co-Founder of the DFW Alliance for Religious Freedom, President of Pathway Centre in south India, and on charitable boards in Texas, Utah, and New York. Barbara (BA Spanish, ’91) is highly involved in the Dallas arts community and as a bilingual docent at the SMU Meadows Museum of Spanish Art and the Dallas Museum of Art. “We believe humanities or liberal arts degrees allow one to better understand and function smoothly in the increasingly global community in which we now live,” remarked
Mr. Benac. “My German literature degree Pathway has provided aid to more than has helped me relate to others as I’ve been 40,000 handicapped children and now proinvolved in complicated global business and vides free medical, dental, and therapeutic financial matters, and care in 13 surrounding more recently in working We help clothe the naked, rural communities. with partners from “As a family, we’ve various countries and feed the hungry and uplift gained the satisfaction cultures on important of striving to practice the downtrodden, the sick true religion,” explained philanthropic endeavors.” One of those endeavors and the infirm. We are Mr. Benac. “We help is Pathway Centre for clothe the naked, feed Mentally and Physically blessed as a family to be the hungry and uplift the Handicapped Children, downtrodden, the sick a nonprofit organization involved in humanity as and the infirm. We are operating in Chennai, blessed as a family to be India. The Benacs have well as the humanities. involved in humanity as been heavily involved well as the humanities.” in fundraising, whereby Pathway has built The Benacs have nine children (all of whom two campuses—the larger being a 60-acre have attended BYU) and 23 grandchildren. facility with a residential school, dormitories, vocational facilities, a small hospital, —SAMUEL BENSON, SOCIOLOGY ’23 and a farm on which Pathway grows most of its own food. Since its founding in 1975,
Van Gessel Asian & Near Eastern Languages
Rick Duerden English
Danette Paul English
Nicolaas Unlandt French & Italian
Mark Davies Linguistics
Bill Eggington Linguistics
Cynthia Hallen Linguistics
Royal Skousen Linguistics
Dan Graham Philosophy
OBITUARY
Masakazu (Kazzy) Watabe Asian & Near Eastern Languages
Norman Clyde Turner French & Italian
S P RI N G 2020
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