F.(rederick) Darius Benham was born April 1, 1896, in Glen Cove, New York. He was educated at the Polytechnic Preparatory School in Brooklyn, New York, and later received an appointment to West Point. He resigned after one year, however, because of illness.
From 1915 to 1916, Mr. Benham was a reporter with the New York World, quitting his job in 1916 to join the French Foreign Legion, with which he fought in France during the First World War. He was wounded, and after recovering, was given a furlough to go and join the UnitedStates Army, by then in France. The Armistice was declared soon after, however, so Mr. Benham stayed in France and helped Herbert Bayard Swope, an American newspaperman covering the framing and signing of the Treaty of Versailles for the Chicago Tribune.
In 1920, he became a staff correspondent for the New York World and covered, among other things, the American visits of Marshal Foch, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), and the King and Queen of Belgium. He went into business as a public relations counselor in 1929, and has since represented Premier Helpburn of Canada, the Byrd Expedition to the South Pole, Knox Gelatin, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Comapny, the United States Shipping Board, the Theodore Roosevelt family, and President William Tubman of Liberia, among many others. Mr. Benham died in a fire in his home on January 25, 1960, after helping one of his daughters to safety.
He married Rosetta Tabor, of Norfolk, Virginia, on February 19, 1938;
they had four children--three daughters and a son.
