Mary Bender Award for Academic Contributions at Goshen College

Mary E. Bender was born in Elkhart County, Indiana to Harold S. and Elizabeth Bender.  She attended Goshen College for a year (1945-46) and then spent some time in Switzerland before returning to Goshen to finish her bachelor’s degree in English and German in 1950.  After graduate work at Indiana University, she taught German, English, Spanish and French at Hesston College, Hesston, Kans. for two years.  She returned to Goshen College to teach English, German and French in 1955 and taught at GC for 33 years!

Rajesh Biyani first came to Goshen College in 1988 as an international student from India. He had heard about Goshen College through publicity about the college’s placement in the U.S. News & World Report.  Biyani spent his first year on campus and his second year living off-campus in a basement apartment with 14 other students. Biyani remembers nicknaming the house on a corner he regularly passed, the “White House.” One day the woman who lived in the “White House” – Mary Bender ’50 – invited G.B. Basnet ’92, originally from Nepal, to move into one of her spare rooms. Her generosity did not end there, as Biyani and Avinash Kessop ’92, also from India, then moved in to the additional spare rooms.

Biyani, who greatly admires Bender and still remains in contact with her, said, “She knew German, she knew French and she taught all kinds of courses at GC.” In the setting of her home, Bender and the students learned together and broke down cultural barriers. They all enjoyed a good laugh when Bender discovered trash at the bottom of the laundry shoot, put there by Biyani when he thought it was a type of incinerator. “We ended up bonding and it became a very family-like setting,” Biyani said.

Bender continued to host students from Nepal and India for many years. “From the first three students who came to my house, I learned much that helped me with students to come,” she said. “I learned and laughed with them at their outlandish schemes for making money, such as standing at the end of my walk and charging toll to classes that met at my house, and their equally outlandish stories.”