John “Johnny” Bender, a former editor at The Press-Enterprise and other Southern California News Group newspapers, has died. He was 64.
Bender, a longtime Moreno Valley resident, died Tuesday, May 9. He had retired in May 2019.
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Bender was not only an editor and journalist, but also a poet, a bass-playing jazz musician, a motorcyclist, husband, father and friend. He attended Moreno Valley United Methodist Church and belonged to the Moreno Valley Amateur Radio Association, family members said.
Bender began professional writing in 1981 as a sports freelancer for the Pomona Progress Bulletin, earning $12 per game story. He spent 19 years as an editor, working at newspapers in the San Gabriel Valley and Pasadena before moving in 2000 to The Press-Enterprise, where he led its Moreno Valley news bureau. Bender later shifted to the paper’s Riverside office, where he oversaw reporting across the Inland Empire as a local editor, politics editor, metro editor and the head of a topics reporting team. He oversaw politics and election coverage, encountering elected leaders from city councils to Congress and their staffs along the way.
In the newsroom, Bender was known for his humor, wit and zany antics. He would ask coworkers to join him in “shoes-optional hours,” during which journalists worked in their socks. He once showed up to the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands — dressed as George Washington. He donned a unitard on several occasions.
“If the newsroom is a palace court, John Bender was the jester,” said Jeff Horseman, who covers Riverside County for The Press-Enterprise and worked several years for Bender.
Bender’s humor offset the intense environment of the newsroom, Horseman said, and “you ended up not taking yourself so seriously.”
“That being said, there was a serious side to him: his job,” Horseman said, adding that Bender was a sharp politics editor who had high journalistic standards.
Suzanne Hurt, a former Press-Enterprise reporter, considered Bender a mentor.
“John was an excellent editor with superb news judgment, a kind heart, and a great wit,” she said. “He was multitalented, and he will be very missed.”
Another of his former reporters, Michelle DeArmond, said he pushed her to dig deeper and ask better questions.
“He had blunt and effective ways of capturing his reporters’ attention, and he cared deeply about his reporters and the quality of the work they produced,” she said in an email.
DeArmond also recalled another antic — the time Bender launched what she called an “ill-fated Bender-for-Publisher campaign at The Press-Enterprise somewhere around 2003” when the paper was between publishers.
“I served as his campaign manager, and we issued a press release with a smorgasbord of campaign promises — including a pledge to annex Canada,” she wrote. “Why, I’m not exactly sure.”
Bender’s wife, René, recalled his second career in jazz. He was a member of his church worship band, and after retiring, joined the band The Golden Eagles, formed the jazz quartet Parish Lantern and helped form a group called Crosstown Cats.
Bender wrote several poetry collections, sometimes using his pen name, Brutus Chieftain, and founded a poetry troupe dubbed Poets in Distress.
On Sunday, May 7, Bender co-hosted an event in Riverside marking the 10th anniversary of the Inlandia Literary Journeys column in the four Inland Empire newspapers, alongside Inlandia Institute Executive Director Cati Porter.
The night before his death, Bender took part in a poetry reading in Idyllwild.
“He was just on fire,” René Bender said.
Porter recalled a “guerilla poetry event” in 2013 at which she, Bender, and poets Juan Felipe Herrera and Gayle Brandeis took to Riverside’s downtown pedestrian mall, towing a wagon with a car battery that Bender rigged to power the microphone and amps.
Steve Lossing, whose illustrations accompanied Bender’s poems, said they were working on a page-a-day calendar.
“That was gonna be our big breakthrough,” Lossing said, adding that Bender cracked the same joke about all their projects.
Bender was just as crazy with his family, which also consists of two adult sons, John and Michael.
Michael Bender fondly recalled a trip to the dog park. His dad began to play in the sprinklers with a child, and eventually convinced his son to join.
“Didn’t even know the kid’s name or anything,” Michael Bender said.
In 2020, Bender and Porter wrote a chapbook, “Slow Unraveling of Living Ghosts.” The beginning of one of his poems, “Letter To Self,” reads:
“Dear Johnny: / Life is a slow unraveling of shocks and surprises. / Cherish yourself. Smile again. / Stop worrying about more friends dying. / Joys bloom boldly but wither at the end.”
The family is arranging memorial service plans.
Editor’s note: A photo caption has been updated to correct an error. Nelsy Rodriguez shot the photo of John Bender on election night of 2012.
