I guess you would call Bud Bennett my mom’s foster-cousin.
You see, Mom’s dad, my grandpa Matt Egloff, had a sister, Alice, who married George Easterly, a kindly cop who patrolled the city of Syracuse. It was about 1934 when Officer Easterly found 7-year-old Bud and his younger sister, Katie, underfed and neglected at an ill-kempt North Side residence. Family lore fails to document the reason for George’s presence at the Bennett home, but we can deduce that Bud’s parents, Edmund Bennett and Mary Ryan, had done something to attract police attention.
Monopoly games
Anyhow, my mom and her brothers and sisters, who lived in Liverpool on Vine Street Road, spent countless Friday evenings at the Easterlys’ North Side domicile. While the grown-ups played pinochle on the dining-room table, the Liverpool kids played board games on the living-room floor with the Easterlys’ ever-growing brood of foster kids, including Buddy Bennett.
“He was a good-looking boy and a real charmer,” recalled my mom, Mary Lou Tarby, who is a couple of years younger than Bud was. She specifically remembered playing Monopoly there.
When World War II erupted, Bud joined the Marines and served in the Pacific. After Japan surrendered, Bud attended college in Chicago and returned to Syracuse, where he sold and serviced those newfangled television sets everybody was buying in the 1950s.
Eventually Bud and his wife, the former Kathleen McCarthy, founded the Bennett Companies, which played a real-life game of monopoly financing hotels, a racetrack, casinos and gambling boats.
Charitable works
Along the way, the Bennetts supported many charities, including the Charlie Brown Basketball Program, another project bringing children from Belfast to Upstate New York and the Christian Family Movement, a grass-roots Roman Catholic family-support group.
“Bud may not have been the smartest man in the world, but he was charismatic,” Mom recalled. “Kathleen was less well-liked.”
Bud Bennett died Dec. 27, at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Syracuse. He was 87. Kathleen predeceased him earlier last year.
Despite his varied philanthropic activities, Bud Bennett’s legacy is darkened by the worst financial scandal ever uncovered in Central New York.
In 1996 the Bennett Companies filed for bankruptcy after the federal government accused its officers of conducting a $1 billion pyramid scheme. The companies owed that staggering amount to 21,000 unsecured creditors. At the time, federal prosecutors called it the largest pyramid scheme in U.S. history.
Financial fraud
Bud’s older son, Patrick, the companies’ chief financial officer, was convicted on 42 charges of creating fake documents, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. He is serving a 22-year sentence in federal prison.
The younger son, Michael, the companies’ second-in-command who once owned the Hotel Syracuse after buying it out of bankruptcy, pleaded guilty to deceiving U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators and hindering their investigation. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and a year of homebound detention.
The government declined to press charges against Bud or Kathleen.
It was as though things had run full circle for Bud Bennett. Despite his humble origins, he had risen to the top echelon of Syracuse business community on the strength of his dogged entrepreneurialism and pleasant personality, but, having apparently inherited the wayward ways of their neglectful grandparents, his sons illegally sabotaged the family fortune. And Bud and Kathleen died in disgrace.
‘Need & Greed’
For a more detailed description of the Bennett saga, see the 1999 book “Need and Greed: The True Story of the Largest Ponzi Scheme in American History.” Liverpool Public Library has a copy on its shelves.
Author Stewart L. Weisman was general counsel to the Bennett Companies from 1984 until its demise in 1996.
In the book the lawyer traces how a small office-equipment leasing company became a conglomerate of resorts, hotels and casinos without adequate finances. By using new investors’ money to pay off earlier investors as well as unethical business practices, Weisman wrote, the Bennetts managed to stay afloat for many years.
Bluegrass Boots
One of the village’s best-known residents is Bill Knowlton, who lives on Meyers Road. Since 1973, Knowlton has hosted his “Bluegrass Ramble” radio program every Sunday night at WCNY-FM 91.3, preserving and perpetuating America’s traditional “high lonesome” sound.
This Saturday, Jan. 10, Bill will emcee his annual Bluegrass Ramble Barn Dance from 1 to 4 p.m. at WCNY’s new studios at 415 W. Fayette St., down city.
The band called Boots N Shorts, featuring Liverpool native guitarist Kevin Morel, will be featured along with Northwater, The Cadleys and Lake Effect.
Aspiring musicians can attend a bluegrass workshop prior to the Barn Dance from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. The Barn Dance concert, which celebrates the 42nd anniversary of Knowlton’s program, will be recorded for broadcast on the “Bluegrass Ramble” show airing from 9 p.m. to midnight Jan. 19, on WCNY-FM; wcny.org.
Readers can contact the columnist at [email protected].
