Laura Jean (Benson) Gasaway
July 10, 1954 – August 14, 2024
“Don’t think of us as dying, think of us as flower children who have gone to seed.”
It is with deep sorrow and much love that we mourn the loss of Laura Jean (Benson) Gasaway. She died with family, friends, and birds by her side on August 14, 2024, at her home in Newberry, MI as a result of advanced cancer at the age of 70. Laura was born on July 10, 1954, in Sweet Home, to John Fredrick Benson and Eva Mae (Kessell) Benson. She was the youngest of four siblings and the joy of her father, who passed away when Laura was just four years old. She graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1972. She went to Southern Oregon University for 4 terms before transferring to Mount Hood Community College where she graduated with an associate’s degree in Horticulture in 1976.
While at college, she met the love of her life, Steve Gasaway and they married in May of 1976. They settled in Sandy, where Laura worked as the office manager of Northwest Shade Trees and Steven worked at Portland General Electric and they both ran an alpaca farm on their land. After Steve retired in 2011, they moved to Newberry in the Upper Peninsula of MI to live the rural lifestyle they both cherished. There, she continued to pursue her love of nature, books, photography, and gardening through volunteering at the Seney National Wildlife Refuge, the Newberry Library Board, and as a member of the Newberry Garden Club.
Laura and Steve loved to travel in their travel trailer with their cats, Pingo, Morris, and Aurora. They toured extensively in the US and Canada and especially loved the Northwest Territories where they regularly attended the Great Northern Arts Festival and collected Inuit art. On their many adventures, they visited 147 lighthouses and 284 covered bridges in the lower United States.
Laura was a generous, bright, funny, and loving person and everyone who knew her will miss her greatly. Her friends never needed any identification books on their walks, Laura could identify any tree, flower, plant, and bird they saw.
She was preceded in death by her parents and her husband of 42 years, Steve. She is survived by her siblings, Carol (Kit) Harma, John (Sue) Benson, and Linda Benson, and three nieces, Ginger Wheeler, Kirsten Harma (Eric Erler), and Darci (Jeremy) Peterson, great -nephews Xalen and Elias Peterson. She is also remembered by Chuck and Karen Gasaway.
In lieu of flowers and a memorial service, Laura requested donations be sent to:
Friends of Seney National Wildlife Refuge,
P.O. Box 447, Curtis, MI, 49820
(https://friendsofseney.org)
