Patty Ganley Bender

April 16, 1938 – February 19, 2026

Patty was born in Detroit, Michigan, the only child of Nat and Anna Ganley. She grew up in a politically left household with strong progressive working class anti-racist, anti-fascist values. She believed in solidarity and building community, but witnessed the repression her parents faced for their labor union and social justice activism. Throughout her childhood, her family was surveilled so she knew not to answer the door for the authorities.

Russian-born, Canadian-raised Anna faced deportation threats. Nat served federal time for conspiring to overthrow the government during the anti-democratic prosecution of what was termed the “Detroit Six” trial of Michigan Communist Party leadership. As a pre-teen at the time, Patty often talked about the solidarity from her comrades’ families with great affection, spending time during the summers in rural Michigan and rallying around families with members in detention or blacklisted from employment.

Patty tells of a childhood meeting with Paul Robeson when he came to Detroit to perform in April (1947 or 48). Since they were both born in April, Patty got the idea of making him a birthday present of a notebook with construction paper. She remembers this gigantic man taking her tiny gift with great seriousness, “It’s just what I always wanted,” said Robeson. Shortly after that experience Anna took Patty to hear W.E.B. De Bois lecture and Patty was confused because Anna had described Du Bois as “a towering figure.” She thought he would be big like former All-American footballer Robeson, but Du Bois was of slight build and in his late 70s by then so she just saw a little old man.

Patty excelled academically attending prestigious Cass Tech High School and considered a career in medicine. At Wayne State University she shifted to Industrial and Labor Relations. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she started an education and organizing position with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in Newark, New Jersey.

At a Newark meeting of the Congress Of Racial Equality in Spring of 1963, Patty met Bob Bender. The two had a self-described “picket-line romance” while mobilizing support for the civil rights Freedom Riders, advocating for integrating the building trades in local construction (such as Barringer HS in Newark) and organizing buses to the Aug. 1963 March on Washington. They were married September 22, 1963 at the Ethical Culture Society in nearby Maplewood, NJ.

Patty started a graduate program in Social Work at Rutgers University, focusing on Community Organizing with an emphasis on Gerontology. While completing her studies, she participated in starting one of the first (maybe the first) Senior Citizens Services Centers in New Jersey in Plainfield. The program was co-funded by the United Automobile Workers union because Mack Truck had moved out of Plainfield, leaving behind a generation of retirees.

Patty enjoyed the one-to-one interaction with seniors, assisting them with the many issues associated with aging, running innovative social, cultural, health, physical fitness and entertainment programs over decades at the center. When she was offered a promotion which would have taken her up several levels into program administration, she declined preferring to maintain the direct work with seniors. It was there she thrived, being an active listener who would ask probing questions and guide people towards resources available to help.

Bob and Patty maintained their commitment to peace and social justice activism, offering draft counseling during the Vietnam conflict and participating in anti-war organizing. During one early 1970’s march on the Mall in Washington, they were tear-gassed with their young children Nat and Dan. Patty was worried her mother would disapprove of endangering the kids so she asked them not to tell her mother what happened. The story came out anyway and Patty said that instead of being angry, Anna thought about it for a minute then said “that’s the first place I was tear-gassed too.”

In 1972, they were among a group of parents who started Children of the Rainbow School, an open-classroom school in Plainfield, encouraging creativity and independent thought in students. Patty served roles with the school including Treasurer and took the students on field trips such as archeological digs; along the way forming lifelong friendships such as with the Shulman family and Jane Raeter.

Patty retained a global perspective. As the Reagan Bush dirty wars destabilized South and Central America, Patty became a founding member of El Centro Hispanoamericano in 1984 to meet the needs of the growing immigrant population around Plainfield. She participated in food and clothing distributions with Witness for Peace and humanitarian efforts regularly.

Patty and Bob loved to sing, joining the Solidarity Singers since its inception at protests, traveling to New York to sing with the Walkabout Clearwater Chorus and the People’s Music Network. Patty said they made a perfect duet because one of them could carry a tune and the other one could remember the words. They treasured the music of Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie and would often strike up an old song when the mood moved them.

Patty was a devoted daughter, taking care of Anna as she aged. She joked with her sons that “I hope I taught you enough about dealing with aging parents to take care of us.”

She and Bob retired and continued their activities in South Florida including Black Lives Matter Alliance Broward, Occupy Fort Lauderdale Labor and the Deerfield Beach Progressive Forum.
Within her retirement community of Century Village East, Patty enjoyed swimming and water aerobics classes, led the photography club, made ceramics and participated in art shows. Her art work took over the walls and shelves of their condo. They sang with the Unitarian Universalist choir and organized fundraising including tribute folk music concerts to Pete and Toshi Seeger to support their environmental campaigns.

Patty and Bob traveled to Cuba and Nicaragua to see the difference between having a social safety net as compared to neo-liberal disaster, they visited Venezuela to see the social progress there and to China. They went to Ecuador to visit former New Jersey neighbors the Aguas family and explore the tropical rainforest and Galapagos Islands. They did trips across Canada to visit mom’s relatives in Winnipeg. The folks took a few cruises with family in the Caribbean and Alaska. Mom went with sister-in-law Annette Bender to France just before 9/11 and got stuck there an extra week when air travel was disrupted. She traveled to Israel and Jordan with dear friend Nicole Shulman. They enjoyed summer trips to World Fellowship, a social justice education and conference center in New Hampshire.

In addition to travel, artistic, educational and professional accomplishments, Patty leaves a distinguished record of civil disobedience arrests. Patty and Bob were arrested with actor Martin Sheen protesting continued nuclear weaponry testing and development at Los Alamos in New Mexico. They were arrested at Fort Benning, Georgia with their visually impaired comrade Ed Lewinson, to shut down the “School of Assassins” where US militarism is taught. Ed was a repeat offender who subsequently sued the federal government for discrimination because they kept releasing him due to his disability. He won his case and was rewarded with six months in federal jail in Leavenworth, but Patty and Bob got off with suspended sentences. In West Palm Beach, Patty went to support a civil disobedience action at Humana to call for health care as a human right. She hadn’t plan to sit in, but noticed only one woman risking arrest. “I didn’t want the woman to get arrested alone, so I sat in too,” she said. Her friend Anne Feeney popularized the song “Have You Been To Jail for Justice” which she enjoyed singing on these occasions.

Bob died in 2019 and Patty readjusted to the new reality of widowhood and a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. She carried on with treatment and generally maintained a good attitude, assisted by a loving community of friends, family and neighbors, especially her cousin Julia Grasso. It is always helpful to have a nurse or two in the family.

Over the last two years, as her disease progressed, Patty required more support and relied on Jacqueline Granville and a team to assist with medical care and daily tasks. Patty received extraordinary care from loving professionals in-home to help make her remaining time comfortable. Weakened by Parkinson’s, Patty succumbed to COPD at Broward North Hospital on February 18, 2026, her lungs too weak to function properly.

Patty is survived by her two sons Nat and Dan, Dan’s wife Gita DasBender, Dan and Gita’s sons Deven (fiancé Anabel) and Reyen, nephew Matthew and niece Rebecca and a host of loving cousins and relatives.

She leaves a legacy of care, kindness and compassion exercised through activism and advocacy for social, economic and racial justice.