Gary Bendjy, former Newsday circulation, sales employee, dies at 70

For decades when Newsday subscribers got their papers every morning, rain or shine, Gary Bendjy was one of the main people who made it happen. In two stints from 1975 to about 2010, in a variety of roles from circulation to sales, the Long Island native was regarded by colleagues as one of the hardest working people in print.

"We'd be starting at 1 in the morning," said his lifelong friend Bobby Rimmer, describing when he and Bendjy worked together in distribution at Newsday in the 2000s. "The trucks would come in to the depot, bringing [freshly printed] newspapers in pallets" for delivery people waiting in vehicles. "We'd have to have the papers out by 5:30 a.m. That was our delivery deadline." And though he, Bendjy and "six or eight other" distribution agents were managers, "If we had people that didn't show up, we would have to actually deliver the papers ourselves. Those papers had to go out."

Decades before that, as a teen in the 1970s when newspapers still had afternoon editions, "Gary was a paperboy," said his wife, Vickie Bendjy, who retired with him from Lake Ronkonkoma to Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2017. "He delivered Newsday on his bicycle."

And as an adult, "He loved working there. And he was always working. He worked so many hours," she said. Even so, "he was always there for the kids, just wanting to enrich them and give them every opportunity. He coached one of our sons’ youth football teams," while also serving as president of the Sachem Ice Hockey Club, and coaching at that independent organization in the Suffolk County High School League.

"I don't know how he did it," she said. "I guess when you're younger, you have more energy. ... And then our grandkids — he’d go to all their games until he started not being able to function well," ultimately succumbing to Alzheimer's disease on July 14, at age 70, at the Wilmington hospice Lower Cape Fear LifeCare.

Gary Lawrence Bendjy was born May 31, 1955, in Glen Cove, the third of seven children of Samuel Bendjy, a Newsday circulation manager, and Helen Kaufman Bendjy. Raised in Levittown, he graduated in 1973 from Division Avenue High School. There he met Vickie Medjuck; they married on July 31, 1977, and bought their longtime home in Lake Ronkonkoma.

Bendjy in 1975 had obtained an associate degree in criminal justice from Farmingdale State College, then a two-year school, but eschewed a career in that field to work for his father at Newsday. Starting in circulation, where he eventually became department manager, he went on to become telemarketing manager and Long Island sales manager before leaving in the mid-1990s to work for his brother Steve’s telemarketing firm.

Bendjy returned to Newsday after a few years, as an independent contractor in sales and distribution roles before leaving again around 2010. He then worked in sales at the Huntington Honda car dealership and later once again with his friend Rimmer at the Flight Adventure Park trampoline facility in Ronkonkoma.

A boating enthusiast, Bendjy docked his vessel "Yeah Bay B" at Nicolls Point Marina in Oakdale. Equally passionate about ice hockey, he had been an Islanders season-ticket holder for a time. In retirement, he volunteered in the education department of the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher, in Kure Beach, and played in the Wilmington Senior Softball Association.

And he had made time in 2007, said his wife, for an adventure-travel trip to Alaska with her. "So we camped out in the woods with the bears and kayaked with the whales," she said.

In addition to his wife, Bendjy is survived by their children, Kevin, of Denver; Jason, of Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina; Bryan, of Austin, Texas; and Laura Green, of Wilmington; siblings Ronald, of Levittown; Michael, of Florida; Linda Nelson, of Lake Ronkonkoma; Janice Tannenbaum, of Farmingdale; and Carol Reale, of Lake Grove; and 10 grandchildren. His brother Steve predeceased him.

He was cremated, and no services were held. A September memorial on Long Island is being planned. Donations may be made to the Lower Cape Fear LifeCare hospice or the Alzheimer's Association.