1987 Swan Award Winner: Ben Denton

Ben Denton has arguably, although humbly and quietly, had one of the strongest impacts on high school choral music in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born in Colony, Kansas in 1918, he had a musical family: his mother played piano for silent movies at the local theater, and his older brother was an accomplished violinist in the Phoenix – Mesa AZ area, where they moved when Ben was a young adult. 

Ben attended Arizona State Teacher’s College in the late 1930s (the pre-cursor of Arizona State University) and following graduation, later studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Boston, refining his talents as an accomplished baritone. He enlisted in the Army in July of 1941, just months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. During World War II he served in Europe as a mortar captain, returning to Arizona after the war where he met and married Shirley Ellsworth.

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