BATH

Ed Benedikt, a former state legislator who was well known for his environmental advocacy, died on Sunday. His death was announced by Friends of Merrymeeting Bay on Monday, an organization in which he had been very active.

Benedikt was active in the Beth Israel Synagogue. He survived the Holocaust as a youth, thanks to the Kindertransport program that saw him safely out of Austria and delivered him to a gentile family in Great Britain, according to Beth Israel Cantor Daniel Leeman. About 10,000 Jewish children were rescued through the program.

Benedikt reportedly stayed for five years in the U.K. before being reunited with his parents.

His experience with the Holocaust motivated his work in forming connections with other faiths, and he became a fundamental part of the Brunswick Area Interfaith Council, according to Leeman.

“He really dedicated his religious, spiritual endeavors to interfaith work,” Leeman said. “He believed, in his heart, that if Jews were less insular in pre-Nazi, prewar Europe and created more intimate relations with their gentile neighbors, that would have been key to preserving peace.”

Later, after having emigrated to the United States, Benedikt would become an engineer.

Benedikt was a member of, and worked with, a plethora of local conservation organizations.

He served for a while in the 1990s in the state Legislature.

“He was just devoted,” said Kathleen McGee of Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, with whom he worked on a number of political issues for 20 years. As a lobbyist in Augusta, McGee said she also worked with Benedikt on other issues including taxes and campaign finance reform.

“He cared deeply about environmental health. He worked on that until the day he died,” she said.

McGee described Benedikt as “a very very thoughtful, sweet caring man.”

“He thought things through,” she said. “He was very conscious of the repercussions of different environmental issues.”

Benedikt was especially concerned with the quality of water in the waterways, bays, estuaries and aquifers.

He founded the New Meadows Lake Association to build environmental awareness of the upper New Meadows River, according to Friends of Casco Bay.

Friends of Merrymeeting Bay Chairman Ed Friedman recalled that Benedikt was “very curious, very thoughtful and engaged.”

Benedikt, Friedman said, was a man “motivated to enact some positive change.”

“He will be sorely missed,” Friedman said.

Before becoming Brunswick’s state senator, Stan Gerzofsky worked with Benedikt on Benedikt’s first campaign.

“He cared. He would sometimes challenge a voter by disagreeing with them if he thought they were wrong. But at the end of the conversation, nobody ever doubted that Ed cared,” said Gerzofsky.

Later, as a senator himself, Gerzofsky recalled how Benedikt would corner him and lobby about environmental issues.

“Ed would get on the elevator with me out of the clear blue to get a moment of my time to talk about environmental issues, dealing with the base, especially,” Gerzofsky said. “He’s the one who convinced me that it was cheaper to keep the environment from getting junked up than cleaning it up after it got junked up.”

Gerzofsky said Benedikt was heavily involved in overseeing environmental cleanup at the Brunswick Naval Air Station, an issue that Benedikt was both stubborn and passionate about.

Associate Kermit Smyth said Benedikt’s heart lay in his work with the Brunswick Area Citizens for a Safe Environment, which he helped found.

BACSE began in 1991, a time when the base was still very much actively used by the Navy. Using $350,000 in EPA grants and $336,000 from in-kind contributions from members — much of that from Benedikt — BACSE has been able to employ professional environmental scientists in researching remediation at the former base.

In a December interview, Benedikt said remediation efforts at the former base have been effective because of “a remarkable coalition and cooperative effort” by former base commanders and staff, members of the EPA, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, and the town of Brunswick.

“Ed has been instrumental in the progress that’s been accomplished at the Naval Air Station base redevelopment,” said Suzanne Johnson, co-chairwoman of the U.S. Navy Restoration Advisory Board and a member of the BACSE board of directors, in a news release issued in December announcing Benedikt was stepping down for health reasons. “His technical expertise, indomitable spirit, ability to bring people together and the huge time and energy commitment he’s given stand us in good stead to continue BACSE’s efforts to ensure safe civilian use of the property.”

Benedikt is survived by his wife, Ruth, with whom he was very close. “They were a force to be reckoned with,” said McGee.

“They were a remarkable team, and their children are high achievers,” said Leeman the Beth Israel Cantor who is expected to officiate Benedikt’s memorial service on Sunday.

“He was quite a remarkable leader,” Leeman said. “In the Holocaust, there were victims and perpetrators. The heroes that come out of that are the righteous gentiles. He was the beneficiary of those remarkable people who saved his life. He always had that sense of gratitude toward his gentile neighbors. That, by itself, and his desire to give back to that interfaith endeavor, is worthy of note.”