Bentley, Angela Arrington (3/11/2010)
From Ben Riley, Class Historian, March 25, 2010
I regret to inform you of the death of our classmate, Angela Arrington Bentley. Angela, who lived in Barrington Hills, Illinois, passed away unexpectedly on March 11, 2010 from a heart attack. She is survived by her husband, Peter Bentley, her 12-year-old daughter, Francesca, her step-daughter, Rebecca, and many other loving family members. After Dartmouth, Angela received a Ph.D. from UCLA, then practiced and taught clinical psychology and later moved into marketing and promotion for Mattel and McDonald’s. With the birth of her daughter, Angela became a full time wife and mother.
At age 43, Angela suffered a life-threatening aortic dissection, resulting in an emergency heart transplant. Angela submitted a beautiful entry detailing her surgeries and her spiritual journey for our 25th Reunion Book. Angela wrote in part: “I don’t view life, people, nature, or God the same way that I did before. I hope I never get over the sense of awe from being on the receiving end of so much love and kindness from medical care personnel, family, friends, strangers, and from a bereaved family I don’t even know. I hope I never get over not having enough strength to open a container of orange juice; I’ll never take for granted the ability to do those kinds of mundane tasks again.”
I met and worked with Angela when we were both Education 1 Teaching Assistants in the Spring of our senior year. She was one of the most impressive people I met at Dartmouth: unbelievably articulate, commanding and brilliant. Angie brought everyone up to a higher level with her discourse and ideas. It was clear she was going to have an important and influential career in psychology and education. She will be missed.
There will be a memorial service for Angela this Saturday, March 27, at 2 pm at Willow Creek Community Church, 67 East Algonquin Road, South Barrington, Illinois.
If you have any memories or photos you would like to share about Angela (or any of our deceased classmates) for inclusion on the class website, please contact me.
Take care, and may every member of the Class of 1979 cherish each day!
From the Chicago Suburban Daily Herald, March 21, 2010
Angela Arrington Bentley of Barrington Hills, unexpectedly passed away at home in the early hours of March 11, 2010. Born August 24, 1957, in Philadelphia, she is survived by her beloved husband, Peter J.H. Bentley; daughter, Francesca Bentley, and stepdaughter, Rebecca Bentley; dear sister, Marie Baker; cherished nephew, Ty (Nicole) Baker; and loving nieces, Jyl (Julian) Dedier and Vanessa (Chunky) Ezekiel. She was preceded in death by her parents, Richard and Emily Arrington; and brother-in-law, Tyrone Baker Sr. There will be a memorial service celebrating the life of Angela from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, at Willow Creek Community Church, 67 East Algonquin Road, South Barrington. The service will begin at 2 p.m. in the Chapel, and immediately following the service there will be light desserts and refreshments at the church. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to The Smile Train, 28th Floor, 41 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10010 in Angela’s honor.
Submitted to our 25th reunion “Rekindle the Spirit” book by Angela Arrington Bentley
Angela Arrington Bentley
23 Oakdene Road, Barrington Hills, IL 60010,
(847) 381-7413, «angelabentley@comcast.net»
Secondary School: Ravenhill Academy, Philadelphia, PA
Dartmouth Major: Psychology
Dartmouth Activities: Afro-Am Society
Graduate Study: PhD, Clinical Psychology, UCLA, 1987
Occupation: Homeschooling Mom/Household CEO
Interests: Christianity/Theology, History of Western Civilization
Spouse/Partner: Peter J.H. Bentley, Cambridge University, England (Attorney, international business law)
2004: Angela with her daughter, Francesca, 5
My life since Dartmouth has been everything different than I imagined. For one thing, it’s been a lot more eventful (and not in all good ways) than I would have expected. I can’t exactly complain about my life being dull!! After graduation from Dartmouth, I went to graduate school at UCLA, and after seven challenging, interesting, but agonizing years, I received a PhD in clinical psychology. That was the end of the predictable phase of my life. After working as a clinical psychologist (therapy, research, and teaching), I found myself doing consulting work for the entertainment industry and eventually underwent a career change from clinical psychology to the field of market research, and eventually, to marketing. I worked for many years with Mattel Toys, eventually becoming marketing director for Disney Toys by Mattel. In the process I became more familiar than anyone should ever be with Mickey Mouse, his friends, theme parks, films, and other endeavors. All in all, it was really hard work, lots of fun, and not anywhere close to where I expected my future to lead me on graduation day. Then after 15 years in the cultural and moral wasteland (i.e., L.A.), I moved to Chicago to head up the worldwide McDonald’s account for a promotions and marketing firm. In the process, I met my modern-day knight, in the form of a true English gentleman and international business attorney named Peter Bentley, got married in Florence, Italy, and settled into Barrington Hills (a horse-country suburb of Chicago). A year later, at the ripe old age of 41, I gave birth to my first child, a little girl named Francesca. I promptly left my job, determined to enjoy a life of bliss as a wife and mother. Except that nothing ever goes as expected—at least not in my life! Soon after my daughter turned two, my husband, my daughter and I were away visiting relatives for Thanksgiving in New Jersey. After a long day of traveling through airports, as we drove to our hotel, I felt sudden pain, first in my left arm, then in my back, and finally across my chest. At first I thought I had pulled a muscle, but I discarded that hypothesis once I became breathless. After being rushed to the local emergency room, it became clear that I was suffering from a massive coronary, although even the doctors were shocked since I didn’t have any risk factors. When the usual drugs administered to stop a heart attack didn’t work, the doctors started to panic. Specialists were called in, I was moved to yet another hospital and, with more tests, the source of the problem became clear, and the news wasn’t good. I was suffering from an aortic dissection (the left main artery to the heart splits apart spontaneously, depriving the heart of oxygen). The brutal facts were these: (1) No one knows what causes aortic dissections, as they’re incredibly rare. (2) Most people who have coronary dissections (around 80%) are dead within 24 hours. My husband was told that a cardiac surgeon would be called in to see if he thought I could withstand surgery. If he did, I had a 50-50 chance of living through the surgery. If he didn’t, I’d be dead by morning. As I said, the news wasn’t good. The doctor did operate, and I did survive the night— barely, and not without waking up three times during open-heart surgery (but that’s another story). During the next few days my family was convinced that I was getting stronger each time they visited. In the meantime, my mind used this “vacation” period (no to-do lists, no books to read, no potty-training or bedtime stories) to wrestle with the overriding big questions of life like, Why am I here? Is there a God? —the significant issues that, ironically, I had been too busy to take the time to reflect upon. Now, I had nothing but time. It didn’t take me too long or too much effort to realize that, yes, my life did have a purpose and, yes, there was a God and He was there for me, despite everything that had happened. Two days of lying flat on my back, as well as having been a finger-snap away from death, showed me that, over the years, I had lapsed into the illusion that I had control over my life. The elaborate five-year plans, the daily to-do lists, the PDA— all of them were calculated to support the reassuring fairy tale that I had control over the uncontrollable. But my plans certainly didn’t include dying at age 43. Yet here I was, unable to pick up a cup of water, to walk across a room, or to even get my heart to beat right. What I could do was to entrust myself to the care of the One who was in control. And so I did. I prayed; I relaxed in the knowledge that others in at least three countries were praying for me, too. The revival of my childhood faith was timely because in the next few hours I would need it. That’s when the doctors broke it to me that medication had been keeping me alive. My heart was so profoundly damaged by the dissection that I could never be weaned from the heart-lung machine. Absurd as it seemed (I mean, three days before, I had been lugging my carry-all bag through O’Hare on my way out of town for Thanksgiving), I would need a heart transplant, and quick, to have any hope of surviving. Unfortunately, getting a “quick” donor heart out of the blue, especially when you have a rare blood type, is no mean feat! But then again, there was that faith and all those prayers. To make a long, complicated story a little shorter, eight days and four more open-heart surgeries later, I had a transplanted heart in my chest! Thankfully, I have made a full recovery from my ordeal— that is, a full physical recovery. I hope I never make a full recovery from the impact of being so close to death— I don’t view life, people, nature, or God the same way that I did before. I hope I never get over the sense of awe from being on the receiving end of so much love and kindness from medical care personnel, family, friends, strangers, and from a bereaved family I don’t even know. I hope I never get over not having enough strength to open a container of orange juice; I’ll never take for granted the ability to do those kinds of mundane tasks again. So what about today? It’s been three years since my transplant and all’s well. There are issues and struggles at times (susceptibility to illnesses, lots of medications, and some side effects), but if you saw me, you’d never know I was a heart transplant recipient. I’ve continued my spiritual journey and have become a Christian; I devote a lot of time to participating in church activities, and to studying the Bible and theology. I’m still happily married to my British gentleman. And lastly, I’m a homeschooling mom— the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done and my secret way of going to school all over again (definitely better the second time around!).
In memory of Angela Arrington Bentley, the Class of 1979 has purchased the following book for Baker Library:
Greek Revival America by Roger G. Kennedy, Rizzoli/Universe International Publications, 2010
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