WhoDat!656

Long before he learned the value of a dollar, Tom Benson learned the value of 14 cents. It went a long way for a boy born two years before the '29 stock market crash and onset of the Great Depression.

His father was a department store clerk. His mother was a homemaker. Although they could afford little, Benson recalled that most days they gave him money to pay for the streetcar to and from school -- 7 cents each way.

Usually, Tom walked. Because riding the streetcar meant doing something he hated: spending money he could save.

Tom Benson, in 2001 profile, was called kind, compassionate, cunning, cold-hearted | NOLA.com

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."