Stephen Benedict was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Scarborough, New York. He graduated from Scarborough School, then received his Bachelor's degree from St. John's College (Annapolis) in 1947. His first job out of college was as an editor for a political science magazine, Common Cause, a monthly publication of the Committee To Frame a World Constitution, located at the University of Chicago. In 1948, he left to work in New York as assistant to Stringfellow Barr, President of the Foundation for World Government in New York, an organization he had helped create to promote the objective of a democratic world political order.
In 1949, Steve decided to take a time out for language and music study in England and Italy. He studied piano and music theory privately in London with Norman Franklin and at Lake Como in Italy with Karl Ulrich Schnabel.
After two years, it was time to go to work and Steve returned to the United States in the fall of 1951. Efforts were then underway to persuade General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the presidency. As an admirer and supporter of Eisenhower who believed he would make a fine President, Steve obtained a job in writing and research with Citizens for Eisenhower, the principal organization working on Eisenhower’s behalf. Steve’s boss turned out to be Dr. Gabriel Hauge, a writer and economist whose work Eisenhower came to admire and who was subsequently put in overall charge of the candidate’s speeches and whistle-stop appearances during the campaign in the summer and fall of 1952. Steve continued as Hauge’s assistant on the campaign train up until the election in November.
After Eisenhower’s election, the new President named Hauge as his personal assistant for economic affairs and brought Steve with him to the White House as his own assistant., in January 1953. In mid-1954 he went on to a new position as Assistant Staff Secretary of the White House, under General Andrew Goodpaster, with a wide range of administrative duties.
In mid-1955, Steve decided to pursue a longtime interest in foreign affairs and joined the United States Information Agency, working in the Office of Policy and Plans. His areas of responsibility were disarmament and United Nations affairs. This job involved him in disarmament negotiations in London and Geneva for the next four years. He served as press officer and U.S.I.A. representative on the U.S. delegations to those meetings.
In 1959, Steve decided to leave government to join a foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, where he remained until 1974 as the Fund’s program officer for the arts and as a adviser to the Rockefeller family on giving to the arts. He left the Fund to direct a special project for the National Endowment for the Arts, directed at assisting and encouraging small foundation in their arts giving.
In 1979, Steve was asked by the Dean of the Columbia University School of the Arts, Schuyler Chapin, to formulate and direct a new Masters Program in Arts Administration, which began in 1980 and which he led until 1989. In 1990, He directed a two-year project for the American Assembly, “The Arts and Government: Questions for the Nineties," which culminated in a national conference and a book of commissioned essays he compiled and edited, Public Money and the Muse, published in 1991 by W.W. Norton. Following a period of independent consulting, in 1997, he joined New School University as Assistant Dean of a new graduate program in theatre, begun by the Actors Studio.
In 2001, Steve decided to retire from administrative work and left New York to pursue writing and research in the arts and government and to organize the Benedict and Holmburg family archives in such a way as to be useful and interesting to subsequent generations. He moved from New York City to Spencertown, New York, in Columbia County, where he now lives.
Throughout his professional career in government, foundations and education, Steve has been deeply involved as a volunteer in a wide array of non-profit cultural organizations, especially in music and theatre. Principal among these has been Theatre Development Fund (TDF) which he helped to create in 1963. He has served as president twice and has been a trustee for 42 years. Full information on the many services TDF performs and on the entire national theatre scene can be found on the Fund’s website, tdf.org