Lorenzo Peter Benet

July 8, 1932 – March 1, 2025

L. Peter Benet, the former Public Works Director of Nashua, NH and a retired Air Force Lt. Col., passed away peacefully March 1st at Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He was 92.

Benet was a lifelong New Englander, who grew up in the Clifton neighborhood in Marblehead, Ma., summered in Brunswick Me. and traversed golf courses across the region with his wife of 54 years, the former Jonna Kristiansen. For more than 48 years, they made their home in Nashua, residing in the community of Coburn Woods while Benet served the city as Public Works Director for 17 years, overseeing the development of parks and recreation facilities, upgrading and managing the city’s wastewater treatment system, and instituting greater efficiencies in the snow removal and garbage collection operations. “One of his first challenges was dealing with the blizzard of 1978,” his daughter Pia recalls. “He slept in the Public Works “Barn” for four days straight.”

Born in Winchester, Ma. on July 8, 1932, Peter was the only son of Eleanor and Lorenzo (Judge) Benet, a laundromat proprietor. His late sister Jane Hueras was an artist who passed away in 2016. Peter was president of his high school class, an honor society member and played on the golf and tennis teams. “Pete Benet will card a 56 on the links,” it was prophesized in the 1950 Marblehead High yearbook.

After graduation from UMass with a degree in engineering and an ROTC commission, Peter enlisted in the Air Force and would serve 21 years. His special assignments included piloting tanker aircraft that refueled airborne B-52 bombers during the Cuban Missile Crisis and flying reconnaissance missions in support of the covert Operation Igloo White that surveilled the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, as well as three Meritorious Service Medals during his career.

Peter’s position on the war changed after he returned from Vietnam, often citing the book, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, as a key influence. He also enjoyed a memoir by pilot Ernest K. Gann, Fate is the Hunter, a dramatic account of the early years of commercial aviation. Rising to the rank of Lt. Col., Peter continued to fly during his Air Force career and he managed Air Force base maintenance operations in Frankfurt, Germany and Sacramento, Ca., before retirement from the service in June 1977.

Peter, his wife Jonna and their daughter Pia moved to Nashua shortly thereafter, a change that also allowed him to be closer to Boston nearby his three sons and two daughters from his previous 16-year marriage to the former Sarah Lowe of West Roxbury, a union that ended in 1970. In a proclamation issued in 1995 by former Nashua Mayor Rob Wagner, Benet was recognized for his “countless contributions along with his “fairness and management skills” as a leader, “earning respect and friendship” from both his subordinates and the political leaders he reported to. “He was able to pull out the best in people,” Wagner told the Nashua Telegraph in a story about Benet’s retirement from the city in 1995. Mayor James Donchess, who also led the city during Benet’s tenure in the 1980s and early 1990s, commented: “He improved the department (of Public Works) considerably in terms of its management and its equipment and he helped upgrade all of the operations.”

For several years after retirement, Benet spent time with his family summering in Brunswick, Me. and wintering in Tybee Island, Georgia. Always drawn to the sea, a good day usually included a round of golf and a nice, boiled lobster for dinner. The Benets would later move to Peterborough to be closer to their daughter Pia, a surgical nurse. Peter struggled with memory loss in recent years but still entertained with his dry sense of humor and a genuine joy for people and life.

L. Peter Benet is survived by his wife Jonna and his children: Pia, Maria, Lorenzo and John, and 11 grandchildren: Fenia, Jereme, Jane, Sophia, Torin, L.J., Hannah, Kyle, Sean, Inez and Jack, and four great grandchildren. He is also survived by his nephews: Jon, Laurence and Peter. He was preceded in death by his son, Edwin, his daughter, Shaun, his sister, Jane, and his nephew, Richard.

A celebration of Peter Benet’s life on Saturday, April 19th at 11 am EST at the Nashua Country Club ballroom, 25 Fairway St., Nashua, NH, 03060. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to Disabled American Veterans: I Help Veterans organization at https://www.ihelpveterans.org/ For more details go to the web page of the Cremation Society of New Hampshire.