Benett Kessler, 1949-2015

Sierra Wave Media announced last Friday that Benett Kessler, long-time Eastern Sierra journalist, founder and owner of Sierra Broadcasters, LLC in Independence, died on Jan. 2 in Northern Inyo Hospital after battling cancer for more than three years. She was 65.

“Kessler,” noted the Sierra Wave announcement, “was a daily presence in Owens Valley and Mono County homes, delivering news reports and opinion pieces on television, radio, online and in print for 38 years about the most controversial issues in the region.” Since the announcement on-air at the radio station and on its website, dozens of faithful listeners and readers have paid heartfelt tribute to her memory.

Bob Todd, operations manager at Sierra Wave Media, said “Benett was the premier journalist in the Eastern Sierra. She approached each day at work and every story with enthusiasm that we found amazing and contagious. It was an honor and privilege to work with her.”

While the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the Owens Valley’s largest landlord and controller of most of its land and water, was the subject of much of her reporting dating back to 1975, when Kessler first began writing about them, and while much of her reporting was highly critical of the LADWP, local LADWP Bishop Office Public Relations Officer Chris Plakos wrote, “In the 35 plus years I knew Benett, I had a deep respect for her intelligence and journalistic ability, and I always considered her a very good friend. We talked often and had many interesting and stimulating conversations, all of which I treasured greatly.”

Echoing Plakos’ comment, Jim Yannotta, manager of the Aqueduct Business Group for the LADWP, issued a statement on Tuesday. “The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is saddened by the passing of long-time Eastern Sierra journalist Benett Kessler,” he wrote. “The area has lost a great advocate and voice, and she will be missed by all.” He went on to note that while they had a different point of view on many issues, he “always appreciated her openness and willingness to engage the issues as a professional.” He ended by saying, “She had an enormous impact on public information about the Eastern Sierra, and her reach was boundless. Her passing has left a void that cannot be filled, but her legacy will long endure.”

William Kahrl, author of the highly acclaimed Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles’ Water Supply in the Owens Valley, wrote in note of her passing: “Benett was enormously helpful while I was writing Water and Power. I wonder if the book could have been completed without her insights and, more important, her example. To me she has always been a model of what journalism at its best can achieve. She was both an occasional scourge and constant inspiration to her community. And she was one of the most courageous people I’ve ever known.”

Kessler noted in “There it is ? take it,” a self-guided audio tour series through the Owens Valley, that Sierra Wave Media was and is still careful not to criticize the LADWP’s employees; Kessler in her interview stresses that LADWP workers are “our friends—our neighbors.”

In another interview, speaking of her childhood, one marked by joy and tragedy, Kessler noted that she was born on Feb. 3, 1949. Her father, Carl Kessler, was a lawyer in Dayton, Ohio. She said she enjoyed attending social events with her father as a young girl. When he became a superior court judge at the time — writing poems and short stories and, as she put it, “flying down the highest hill in the neighborhood on my fun, cheap bike.” She noted sad times as well, saying that her parents divorced and her step-father committed suicide when she was 15 years old.

Kessler was editor of her high school newspaper. She graduated from Wilbur Wright High School in 1967,

going on to attend the University of Chicago for three years, got married in 1970, and “We split up a year later,” she said.

In 1972, Kessler met John Heston, an Owens Valley resident and student of comparative religion and the writings of Manly Palmer Hall, founder of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, and moved in 1975 to the hacienda-style compound that Heston designed, built and shared with his companion, Kenny Scruggs, at the north end of the town of Independence. She lived there for the next 39 years.

In 1976, Heston created Eastern Sierra News Service, which he operated with Kessler out of his home. Their motto: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”? a phrase lifted ironically from American humorist, journalist, and writer Finley Peter Dunne, in which he was expressing alarm over the power of newspapers exerting influence out of proportion where they had no legitimate business. Over time, the phrase took on a different meaning, and as Benett would often say, she abhorred bullies and those that misused their power and authority. Her Bureaucrat Beat with Sierra Wave Media often took on federal and state bureaucracies, and was not limited to LADWP.

Heston and Kessler created the Inyo County Newsletter in 1977, followed by Sierra East Television, Inc. in 1982, with the backing of local investors. They leased cable channel 12 in Bishop to launch the Owens Valley’s first local television station.

In 1996, they established KDAY-FM (now KSRW) radio, and four years later founded a television station. By then the radio and TV operations had grown into Mammoth Lakes and Mono County, and it is now known as the Sierra Wave.

Heston died in 2007; his companion Scruggs died in 2012. Kessler is survived by her mother, Carolyn Husco.

Fittingly, the Inyo County Board of Supervisors concluded their Jan. 6 meeting in memory of Benett Kessler. But of all the many tributes and messages of condolences that Benett has received, one in particular best sums up her life: She was one of a kind.