Homer Stanley Benson, Jr. Thursday, May 27, 2021
Homer Stanley Benson, Jr.
Dr. Homer Stanley Benson, Jr., 95, died peacefully in his Chattanooga home on Tuesday, May 25, 2021.
A resident of Chattanooga since 2006, he was an active member of the Kiwanis Club and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. He also served for many years as a judge on the Torch Award Committee for the Better Business Bureau and as a volunteer counselor for SCORE.
Dr. Benson was born on December 29, 1925 in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of Homer Stanley Benson Sr. and Lou Ellen Bragg. His parents soon after moved back to Columbus Georgia where Dr. Benson graduated from Columbus High School. Further schooling was interrupted by his military service in World War II as a Navy dental assistant in Corpus Christi and then Great Lakes Naval Training Center. In 1950 he graduated from the University of Georgia as a proud Sigma Chi with a BS in Chemistry. Schooling was interrupted again by
Army’s 1st Black Ranger instructor remembered for fighting crime in Columbus, Georgia Tim Chitwood, (Columbus, Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer via the AP February 14 A Ranger sign inside a training camp near Schofield Barracks, Oahu, Hawaii, May 13, 2019. (Staff Sgt. Hailey Haux/Air Force) COLUMBUS, Ga. Columbus drug dealers couldn’t scare an old Army Ranger who’d done two tours of combat duty in Vietnam, so they gave up. That’s how Milton “Davey” Lockett Jr. became a local hero at least twice, in his life: At Fort Benning, he became the Army’s first Black Ranger instructor, in 1959. In the Columbus neighborhood where he retired, he led a front-line attack on crime in the 1990s, helping start Carver Heights Against Drugs.