Benjamin Taylor Sneed of Sag Harbor was a longtime colleague and friend to many of us at The Independent Newspaper. He is remembered here by his friend Ryan Horn. His obituary appears here.
In one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, a desperate Bulgarian girl named Annina asks Humphrey Bogart’s character in “Casablanca” about the police captain portrayed by Claude Raines. “Monsieur Rick,” she inquires, “what kind of a man is Captain Renault?” Bogie’s reply: “Oh he’s just like any other man, only more so.”
For years I thought it the perfect description of my great friend Ben Sastre. His flaws, his strengths. His vices, his virtues. His sadness, his smiles. His brain, his heart. His physicality, his personality. Everything about him about him was robust and oversized.
The heartbreak from his death a week ago tonight is likewise magnified — and at times overwhelming. Between January 1991 and August 2020, many of my friends and acquaintances have passed away, but none as close to me as Ben.
We met on a summer afternoon in 1999, more than half my life ago, in the Cigar Bar, formerly located in Sag Harbor’s “Fort Apache” building. I visited there nearly every night thanks to the hospitality of another close friend who worked there at the time.
Ben was showing off his Franco-era Spanish military surplus belt. It was very cool. What was even cooler was our mutual Iberophilia. It was the first of our many shared interests. I had been in Spain a year and half before, and he traveled there for two weeks every Spring and Fall. His experiences were impressive, but during our long chat, he dispensed two pearls of knowledge. One of them was low-cost lodging in the center of Madrid. I still have the “Guest Check” he wrote on. “I know we’ll end up in Spain,” he would later say. Prescient he was: Madrid, Granada, Madrid again, Toledo.
I didn’t see him much in the years right after, except during breaks when I came back from college and grad school at Cornell. He was always so proud of that, my adventures there, and everything after. Whether he was entertaining guests at his home or on the town, like a medieval herald, or the pause function on a smart TV, he would recite my name, background, credentials, and filmography whenever I entered a scene.
Someone recently shared a Huffington Post op-ed entitled, “Telling Male Friends ‘I Love You’ Is A Muscle Guys Need To Flex Every Day.” If it were an actual muscle, and not just a metaphor for the writer, Ben would be on the cover of Muscle & Fitness. Even without any more handshakes and hugs for a while, I’ll have forever the texts and voicemails to prove it.
He was born Benjamin Taylor Sneed, and often addressed as such by his late mom, Joanne, and his many awards and accolades, such as London’s coveted “Freedom of the City” distinction. Spaniards call him Benjamín. He is simply Ben to friends and colleagues. In print, it’s BT Sneed. He is known as “Brother Ben” to family, his closest friends, and the Free and Accepted Masons. Claudia, his beloved wife of 19 years, still summons him with a call of “Amor….” Then there’s Facebook, where thousands know him as Ben Sastre. (For the uninitiated, “sastre” means “tailor” in Spanish).
In life Ben reached the pinnacle of his profession on eastern Long Island. Ever the “ad man,” we joked he could sell ice futures to Eskimos. It was both a gift and something he worked hard at, whereby he could make anyone feel great about themselves. When he did that, sale or no sale, at that moment, you were the most important person in the world to him.
Yet along with this generosity, Ben had stringent quality controls for the deepest-rooted friendships he nourished over the years. He cared so deeply about them and saw us as both an extension and reflection of himself. He was a true believer in the 17th century Spanish proverb, “Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres.” “Tell me who you walk with, and I will tell you who you are.”
At 54 years old, Ben was taken far too soon. But not before he had already lived a full, rich, and meaningful life. I am proud to have walked with him for more than two decades of it, and confident in the faith of our forefathers I will again.
In writing a longer eulogy for my much missed friend, I remembered the words of the poet Catullus, first brought to my attention four years ago in a similar situation by Patrick Buchanan:
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.
And forever, brother, hail and farewell.