Overshadowed by the sad and shocking news of the death of Cayuga County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Terri Bridenbecker on Sunday was another passing, that of Sarah Benham. If you live in Auburn you may have never heard of her, but for nearly a decade and a half she played a vital role in preserving the integrity of Auburn's record keeping, something that was a lackadaisical, at best, process, prior to her hiring in 1993.

Upon his appointment as city clerk in 1989, Paul C. Norman put a great deal of effort in professionalizing his office. One of the items that he took over was Memorial City Hall's fourth floor storage room of sorts. The area that leads up to “Old Wheeler,” the bell that tops the building, seemed to be a city junk room that would have made Fibber Magee and Molly proud. Among the unmarked and open file boxes were scale models of downtown Auburn and the landfill, toilets and urinals that had been stored there after a renovation and a large mounted deer head with a full rack. By the time he left city government nearly six years later, his proudest accomplishment may have been the cleaning up of the room that included installing new lighting and a hefty re-organization - much of the later accomplished by Benham.

Knowing at the time that the city was going through a period of major mandated expenditures (the landfill and water/sewer systems), Norman knew that successive city councils would not look kindly to investing a great deal of funds into record keeping and filing. He aggressively sought funds from the state that allowed him to hire Sarah, who took on the task of organizing what was thought to be the unorganizable at Memorial City Hall (she later did the same for the Auburn Police Department attic, where arrest records and files were strewn all over the place). Successive city clerks rightly worked hard, as state funds declined, to keep her records retention clerk position in the budget. She was the go-to person to make sure that what occurred in the past was not only stored correctly, but easily accessible to employees, the public and press.

In an e-mail on Monday, current city clerk Debbie McCormick may have said it best when she wrote, “Sarah's work ethic, passion and appreciation for the importance of historical government records will be hard to match. She was a unique and one of a kind person that I learned so much from and records management was just a part. I am grateful to have worked with Sarah. I know I am not alone in saying I will miss her not only as a co-worker but also as a friend.”

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com