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When I was first an officer of the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL), I contacted Ben in El Paso and wanted to bring him back into the organization. In tearful conversations with me, he told me about the homophobia he faced from the old TIL. We were changing the organization, and I was determined to help right those historic wrongs when the best writers from Texas were ignored or excluded because of their race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation. Frankly, this injustice made me angry.
When I became president of the TIL, one of my missions was to lead the effort to get Ben the lifetime achievement award, which we did in 2020. Long overdue. Ben was a great writer, a remarkable friend, a mentor, and an inspiration for me as a writer and as a person wanting to make a difference in the world. We shared that love of El Paso and la frontera. I am so glad he talked to me about his literary papers during his last years, and they are where mine are, at the Wittliff Collections in San Marcos, Texas.
I had many heartfelt conversations and dinners with Ben, who was a complex person and writer, who struggled with addiction, among his many "monsters," as he would call them. I don't think you can look at any writer in a cartoonish fashion, as some sort of cardboard cutout that is not human. Ben was human, with human frailties, as well the struggles against them that helped to create his great literary art. That is how we all are, when you get to know us. Too often we ignore this complexity on social media, or jump to condemn it, instead of trying to understand it. If Ben taught me anything, he taught me about empathy, as any good writer should.
I will miss you dearly, Ben. Thank you for all you did for me and for so many who wanted to be voices for El Paso and the border.
(The photo is from April 23, 2022, when I brought the TIL to El Paso, Texas as president, and we had our banquet at Ardovinos Desert Crossing.)
