On his 97th birthday Jack Benfield loaded into a stretch Hummer booming with loud music and flashing lights and took off south for a birthday party thrown by friends.

The adventure was exemplary of his life.

“He was a great person. He was one of the last of the Renaissance people,” said Bill McMillan, a close family friend.

Mr. Benfield, who was born John D. Benfield but called Jack, died of natural causes in his Delray Beach home on Wednesday, according to friends. He was 99.

Mr. Benfield is remembered for his donation of a 70-piece collection of Early American furnishings to Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale.

The pieces are housed in a special three-room addition to the private school. Mr. Benfield and his late wife, Betsy, began their collection as newlyweds living in Brooklyn as an inexpensive way to furnish an apartment. The pieces turned into a priceless set.

“Betsy had the eye for quality and for beauty,” Mr. Benfield said in an interview in 2005. “I just said, ‘Yes, dear.'”

The Benfields developed a 30-year friendship with Mae McMillan, who founded Pine Crest. McMillan’s son, Bill, was president of the school in the early 1990s, and Mr. Benfield talked with him about getting the collection housed at the school.

The dedication for The Benfield Collection was held on Sept. 18, 1993.

“He was a great philanthropist,” McMillan said.

Mr. Benfield was born on March 5, 1908, the fourth son to a Cleveland, Ohio, family. His birth took place on the family dining room table, the account recorded in Reflections of a Century Past, a self-published book he wrote when he was 96.

The book describes growing up before and after the Great Depression, meeting Betsy and his successful work first as a salesman in the Midwest, and then the inventor of the Benfield Bender, which electricians use to bend electrical conduit.

He didn’t retire from his electrical supply business until December 2004.

Mr. Benfield had a lifelong taste for excitement. His work took him across the country; his adventurous spirit took him around the world.

“He had a wonderful sense of humor,” said close friend Elizabeth McNeill Leicester, who said she was like a daughter to him. She recalled taking him to England. Her husband, L. Anthony Leicester, added that Mr. Benfield also loved Disney World and the circus.

His wife died of heart problems in 1984. He’d been living in Fort Lauderdale and in 1993 decided to relocate to Delray Beach.

But his love for life lasted until the very end. He celebrated his 99th birthday last week at his home, with 50 of his closest friends.

“Lots of champagne,” Elizabeth Leicester said. “He enjoyed every minute of it.”

Erika Slife can be reached at or at 561-243-6690.