6 minute read
Change in Longitude
from June 2025
By James R. Benya, PE, FIES, FIALD
Since my last article, Deborah and I moved across America from northern California to North Carolina. It’s time for us to begin retirement, and after months of study and serious discussions, we ultimately prioritized being a lot closer to family and our oldest friends, the majority living in the east and southeast states.
There were a multitude of other considerations, particularly latitude (36° or less due to winter depression), climate, the quality of senior life, healthcare, and cost of living. While I will miss many friends and things that enriched my life in the West since 1984, we have found the right spot and look forward to this new period in our lives.
There’s a lot of emotion and decision-making that comes with retiring after 53 years of working professionally 5 (or more) days a week. Over half a century in the field of lighting, starting with work as an electrical engineer for the Smith Group. That, of course, is where I caught the lighting bug and IES commitment from the late Steve Squillace, my boss and mentor, and from my first co-worker, David DiLaura.
After a truly exciting 11 years, I moved to San Francisco and briefly worked for Fran Kellogg Smith, and then on my own or with partners for over four decades, hundreds of projects, dozens of coworkers, and easily several thousand lighting industry colleagues with whom I worked. More than 75% of my friends are part of the industry, too.
So, even though retirement means not providing professional services, in my heart I really want to stay connected and participate in some way in the national and international lighting communities.
Physically closing an office is one of the most heart-wrenching steps in the process, and it is really overwhelming. Books, catalogs, photographs, thousands of 35 mm slides, hundreds of medium format film images, IES Handbooks (5th Edition on), reference books, and several generations of LD&A, Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, and Architectural Lighting in which I had written more than 60 articles since 1975. Copies of my books, Lighting Design Basics (2007 and 2012 editions) and Lighting Retrofit and Relighting: A Guide to Energy Efficient Lighting (still available on Amazon). Multiple IES handbooks and individual recommended practices.
And my treasures, including the EdisonReport Lifetime Achievement Award, the crystal trophies of three IES Awards of Excellence, and dozens of framed lighting design award certificates. Yes, winning design awards was very important to me, and I was certain to share credit with the whole project team.
Moreover, the awards serve as a reminder of the people with whom I worked and the role I played in achieving something special. Literally, a story of relationships and project challenges is found in each one. I plan to keep a few in a special place, like a shrine, maybe in my living room.
On the other hand, cleaning out the sample room was relatively easy. Friends and family know that I “lean green,” so the trash bin is unacceptable. I take care of samples and return most of them while they are still viable. If the rep doesn’t want them, I make sure that they work and donate them to Habitat for Humanity.
I also have a reasonably up-to-date group of light meters including illuminance, luminance, and spectrum measurement equipment. As I have remaining expert witness cases, they will be safe in a closet and used occasionally. I’ll probably end up giving them away in a few years.
And then, there are generations of office equipment that I bought and used to do the work. This involved a lot of cost for office equipment and software, acquired over the last 43 years. From a series of ever-more powerful computers, software and peripherals dating back to before Windows now long gone, starting with my original IBM PC/XT, original Compaq portable, and the first Toshiba real laptop from 1987 that could be used on an airplane.
And then there were cameras. I knew that images were the soul of the profession and beyond necessary for marketing. It was painful donating my 35 mm and medium format film cameras and lenses that were once worth a small fortune. I had dozens of glass and gel filters to correct the color balance of film to properly render MR16 halogen, fluorescent and HID sources.
I have fond memories of working with Doug Salin, the photographer of most of the major award projects for my firm, partners and colleagues. Doug also taught me how to take and tweak an exposure to eliminate, for example, the green spike of MR16 halogen lamps which was caused by the dichroic reflector. I miss the care and discipline taking a good image took before today’s phones.
We’ve decided that a few of my memoirs will remain in our home, mostly my degrees, IES and IALD Fellow awards, crystal trophies and lifetime awards from EdisonReport and the San Francisco IES community. Deborah is an extremely skilled interior designer. Whether they end up in the foyer, dining room or the garage is yet to be determined, but I am sure they will look good.
I will probably scan my slides and transparencies into the digital realm, a nice rainy-day project that will allow me to sell my well-traveled Kodak slide projector and much more conveniently review my history on a large video screen whenever I want.
That said, I hope to find a way to remain a relevant part of our lighting community. I’ll stay on with designing lighting (dl). Perhaps it will be writing a column that is more philosophical like the late Bill Warren did for LD&A.
In fact, I would like to model my retirement as he did. I knew and really liked Bill, whose enjoyable column in LD&A ran for what seemed like decades. And I might even be talked into speaking at annual IES or IALD conferences, or maybe even LightFair.
But then again, I considered Howard Brandston to be one of my mentors, and he really retired, happily to his country home.
The biggest question left is what to do with the certificates, awards, trophies, and plaques collected over the years. I’ve concluded that I really don’t need to impress people, and I would rather maintain a relationship with the industry and serve when and if it calls. In many ways I hope it does and in equally many, I hope not.
Thanks to all for the community that I love and for a career that I was very fortunate to have pursued, and for the opportunity to share my thoughts through designing lighting (dl).
