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– Doug and Joan Benzon –
Lifetime of service summed up in relationships

For someone who’s spent more than half his life crunching numbers and analyzing data, Doug Benzon’s past 38 years can be reduced to one common denominator – relationships.

When Doug and wife Joan jointly bid farewell to their colleagues this afternoon (July 6), the memories they will carry are all about people. And while both will miss their co-workers, it will be easy to stay connected, Doug said. “It’s easy to text, e-mail and call, so it should be easy to keep in touch,” Doug said.

Want proof?

Doug took a short break Tuesday from reminiscing about the past to read an e-mail message from a retired ITD colleague who offered her congratulations and best wishes. Just like that … friendships live beyond retirement.

Joan and Doug have been together since the year after their graduation from Idaho Falls High School. That was during the zenith of the “flower power” generation of the mid ‘60s, though they didn’t get caught up in the free-spirited movement.

They were acquainted in high school and graduated in the class of 1967, but it wasn’t until a couple years later that they started seeing each other as more than classmates. Doug returned from a church mission and marriage followed in 1970.

Doug became the first – and until today – the department’s only Economics and Research Manager.

Ironically, Doug and ITD arrived in Boise together in 1974. His appointment came the same year the Department of Highways was reshaped into the Idaho Transportation Department and the Department of Aeronautics joined the department as a new Division of Aeronautics.

Doug and ITD have been together ever since. Joan, who closes out a 12-year career in the Office of Highway Safety, joined the team in 2000 as a vehicle crash analyst. She added more duties a year later and has been the department’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System manager the past 11 years.

Things were different when Doug accepted the ITD position – the department was much smaller, which made establishing friendships much easier. He was also skinny and had a full head of hair, he recalls.

He assumed a wide range of responsibilities under the umbrella of Economics and Research manager:

Legislative fiscal impact analyses;
Distributed funds quarterly to Idaho’s 300 units of local government;
Processed bulk information requests, such as DMV records requests;
Performed cost allocation studies for state, regional and national organizations;
Served on the Federal Highway Administration funding committee and committees of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program ((NCHRP), the Western Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials and the National Governor’s Association.

He served on three governor-appointed transportation funding task forces and a Congressional funding task force at the request of Sens. Steve Symms and Larry Craig, and worked with legislative groups and transportation colleagues in neighboring states.

Doug became the department’s undeniable expert on ITD data and is perhaps best known in Idaho state government as the guru of economic forecasting. Through economic sunshine and drought, he has proven to be a remarkably precise barometer on revenue projections.

Perhaps a Transporter story in 2004 captured his expertise best:

Doug Benzon has been forecasting gas tax revenue so long, his predictions rank alongside fine quartz watches and tide charts for accuracy. He usually projects two years in advance as part of the legislative budget process.

The most recent report indicates that revenue collections through March are two-tenths of a percent below his forecast while special fuels are two tenths of a percent above his projection. His forecast was made when Idaho was in the throes of an economic downturn and long before the current explosion of gas prices.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a micro master's of Business Administration. Doug was awarded a federal grant to complete his degree requirements and was the only non-engineer of the 10 recipients.

Joan brought a wealth of experience in the medical field to her position in the Office of Highway Safety. Although seemingly unrelated, she often calls on that background when working with analyses and federal reporting of crash fatalities.

She has been honored three times nationally for outstanding service and accuracy in reporting crash data to FARS, which operates under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In the next few months, Joan plans to cash in some of the health-care chips she earned during Doug’s arduous recovery from a near fatal accident on the Headquarters campus. After retiring, she will receive two artificial knees (one in July and the other in October) and will follow with hand surgery.

Doug will be able to empathize fully.

The last thing he remembered on Nov. 13, 2009, was walking across a parking lot access road at ITD. He had just parked in the Highway Safety lot and was headed to his office in the main building when he was blind-sided by a local driver using the route to access busy State Street.

'I don’t hang things up. I don’t quit.'

– Doug Benzon

He sustained a broken knee, four broken ribs, a punctured lung, a lacerated spleen and major injuries to his entire left side of his body.

The impact knocked his shoes off and sent him hurtling though the air. He spent the next six weeks unconscious in a hospital intensive care unit. He remained in the hospital another six weeks after regaining consciousness and was denied food or water for two months.

Yet, within three weeks of being discharged, he was back in his office on a part-time basis. He endured reconstructive knee surgery early last year.

He refused to let the calamity end his career before his choosing. Doug has reached the mature age of 103, as measured by the state’s rule of 90 (age plus years of service), and could have retired before the car crash, or any time thereafter.

“I don’t hang things up,” he insists. “I don’t quit.”

Medical staff probably would agree. His recovery from the catastrophic crash came much faster than most would have expected. Yes, it was painful, Doug admits, but he’s not one to surrender.

At the head of their post-retirement agenda is a trip to eastern Idaho and Montana to visit their four daughters, their husbands and eight grandchildren.