Gary Varvel: Remembering Steve Benson, my friend

Plus a new Humor Me cartoon. Paid subscribers get a Jeffrey Epstein cartoon from my archives

Me with Steve Benson at a cartoonists’ convention in 2015.

On July 8, former Arizona Republic editorial cartoonist, Steve Benson, passed into eternity. He was 71. Steve won the Pulitzer-prize for editorial cartooning in 1993.

Steve grew up in the Mormon church. His grandfather was Ezra Taft Benson who was 13th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving from 1985 until his death in 1994. Steve’s grandfather was also the 15th U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, serving under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Republican politics was in Steve’s blood and he became a dedicated pro-life, conservative cartoonist throughout the 80s. His work was inspirational during the time when I was still trying to break into cartooning. Then everything change.

After Steve's grandfather had a heart attack followed by a stroke when he was in his 90s. Steve knew the Mormon church leadership was covering up the fact that his grandfather was senile and didn’t know his own grandson, let alone, God. Steve and his first wife, Mary Ann had been having doubts about the Book of Mormon and Mary Ann began studying its history. She found that it had been changed 3,500 times. They decided to leave the Mormon Church in 1994. It became a public spectacle because Steve was in the royal bloodline. It became national news.

Unfortunately, instead of pursuing the God of the Bible, Steve rejected all religion and became a diehard atheist, far left pro-abortion cartoonist. He said being an atheist gave him a 10% pay raise and an extra day off each week (Because he no longer went to church nor gave a tenth of his income to the church).

I first met Steve at an Association of America Editorial cartoonists convention in 1994, a few months before I got the cartoonist job at the Indianapolis Star. Steve and I both worked for the same publisher, Gene Pulliam, (Dan Quayle’s uncle) and he made me feel right at home at the convention.

A couple of years later, my wife and I vacationed in Phoenix and we had lunch with Steve and cartoonist Mike Ritter (who died in 2014).

The lunch turned into a debate between me and Steve about the Bible. After that, whenever he saw me he'd jokingly call me his crazy Christian cartoonist friend. But we remained friends.

Around 2012, Steve and I were in weekly communication because our two papers, now owned by Gannett, began running our cartoons counterpoint to one another in Sunday's paper. Many times we would draw about the same subject with him on the left and my cartoon on the right side of the issue. He told me once some of his readers wanted me to switch jobs with him. I’m sure some my readers in Indy wanted Steve rather than me.

In 2019, Gannett offered a buyout and I took it but Steve did not. Two weeks later, Gannett laid off Steve Benson. I texted him when I heard and he said that he was shocked because me he was told that his job was safe. He was heartbroken. His dismissal came on the heels of his adult daughter’s accidental death the previous October. She was hit by a car while riding her bike to work. Steve had also suffered through a divorce a few years before. I texted him that I was praying for him. He said thanks. I prayed for his salvation and that God would make Himself known to Steve and give him hope.

That was the last time we communicated. So I didn’t know that Steve had a stroke in February of 2023 and never recovered remaining mostly nonverbal until his death.

Steve Benson and I were polar opposites but we were friends and I grieved when I heard that he was gone.

A long time ago, I tried to plant the seed of the gospel on a stony heart. I’m hopeful that God brought someone into Steve’s life to water what was planted and that it bore fruit before he passed.

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Acts 17:26-27

“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”

Indiana Senator Jim Banks hand delivered my cartoon of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to the man himself. The Secretary kindly signed a copy of my cartoon back to me.

Special thanks to Chris Crabtree for making this happen.

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