On November 12th, Raymond Ellis Benson (born November 2nd, 1924, in the Bronx, New York) of Weybridge, son of Mikhail Benson and Vera (Peskin), passed away peacefully at Porter Medical Center. Raymond Benson had a distinguished thirty-year career as a foreign service officer in the U.S. State Department, including Yugoslavia (Zagreb and Belgrade), West Germany, Turkey, and eight years in Moscow. He retired in 1987 with the rank of Minister-Counselor, and lived and worked in Middlebury since that time, initially as founding director of the Collegiate Consortium for Academic Exchange, affiliated with Middlebury College, and then with the Salzburg Seminar. Earlier in his life, he served in the U.S. Army, in Korea, between WWII and the Korean War. After his service in the Army, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin. He then attended the Russian Institute at Columbia University. He is survived by his loving family, his wife of sixty-one years, Shirley, their daughter Carolyn, and their sons Michael and Nicholas. In lieu of flowers, please remember Ray by giving to Elderly Services Inc., P.O. Box 581 Middlebury, VT, 05753.