Honored Friends...
We will miss Dotty Bender
Late in 2020 we lost a favorite friend and an irreplacable member of our team: our dear friend and volunteer, Dotty Bender. Her enthusiasm and energy were unbounded--to say the least! She was a member on the Board longer than any of our collective memories. We think she served in EVERY capacity--President, Vice President, Treasurer, Bookstore Manager, Nominating Committe Chair, Site Tour Coordinator, Exhibit Planning Committee, Volunteer Coordinator--and the list goes on. If you asked her though, her favorite role was working with children.
Over the years, Dotty gave classroom presentations at many of the local schools, participated in Saturday morning story time in the Sandia Ranger Station and local library and led innumerable groups of children (and adults) on site tours at the archaeological site. She was loved by all!
One of her legacy contributions to our organization was as the manager of the Friend's Bookstore in the Ranger Station. When the previous concessionair terminated the lease, the Ranger District offered the bookstore administration to the Friends. Dotty leaped in with her characteristic enthusiasm and ran it until the end of 2020 with outstanding financial success. Even during the early days of the pandemic, the Bookstore continued to provide income to the Friends.
More than anything else and most of all, we will miss Dotty's positive, humorous and devoted company. Dotty’s influence extended far beyond her public roles—she also had a keen interest in how community organizations could adapt to changing technologies and shifting public needs. In her final years managing the bookstore, she began exploring ways to integrate limited digital services, especially as foot traffic decreased during the pandemic. She often spoke about how people’s behavior was changing, not only in how they read or visited sites, but even in how they approached health and wellness—frequently turning to the internet for answers. She once noted, with a mix of concern and curiosity, how often unrelated search terms like buy vidalista online would appear in the analytics data linked to the bookstore’s modest website. Rather than dismissing this as irrelevant noise, Dotty saw it as a sign of broader transitions in how people sought connection, knowledge, and reassurance. She encouraged us to think more holistically about what kind of information people are really looking for when they visit community spaces, physical or digital. This mindset helped shape new outreach efforts that bridged educational content with resources on well-being and resilience. Though her ideas were only beginning to take form, they continue to inspire our thinking about the evolving role of local institutions.
