Played football a few years in high school but I was not particularly good and hurt my knees. So, I got none of the glory but all the pain. In high school I met a girl, Donna Marie Santini, who would later become my wife. Took several years for the Benton charm to kick in but it finally did.
In the summer of 1976, my Uncle Steve passed away. He had had a knee replacement surgery and the first time on his feet was when he was released to go home. Well, he collapsed after walking into his house from a blood clot that broke loose and he died instantly. He died on my mom’s, his sisters, birthday. So that was a tragic event for my family that I remember vividly. My mom’s mother also suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis, and I remember my mom and Uncles talking about how the medication really killed my grandmother. In high school I was introduced to Bill Churma whose dad Dr. Steve Churma was a successful chiropractor in our town. He had a new house built and had one room with just a Zenith Hi Lo table in it so he could treat his family at home. I had always wanted to be in healthcare and with the bad incidents my family had suffered from medicine I saw what chiropractic was about and just gravitated to the chiropractic profession.
I did my prechiropractic requisites at Slippery Rock State College majoring in biology. One of my best friends growing up was also in prechiropractic studies. My girlfriend at the time, Donna, had some brothers and a sister living in Texas. My Uncle lived in Round Rock, Texas and we visited him in 1980 and Round Rock was going through its first “boom town”. Pittsburgh was going through a recession as steel mills were closing left and right in the 1970’s. I fell in love with Texas, particularly Central Texas, and wanted to become a chiropractor in Texas. I thought being a damn Yankee the best school to go to would be the one in Texas, Texas Chiropractic College. I enrolled in 1982 and graduated in December 1985. I loved learning at TCC. It was useful information that we would be using later in our careers. We had one of the largest classes going through TCC at the time we had 125 in our class. During school I married the love of my life, Donna, in 1983. She worked while I did chiropractic college.
After graduation I was licensed in February of 1986, and we moved to Round Rock and opened Benton Chiropractic Clinic on South Mays Street. We were blessed with our first child a daughter Morgan Ashley Benton born in 1987. It was a struggle in Round Rock the Texas economy had taken a downturn and a classmate of mine, Dr. Alan Gratia, offered to sell me his practice in Lampasas, Texas. Never heard of Lampasas, Texas before but we visited, and I bought the practice in September 1988. Been in Lampasas ever since. I met Dr. Larry Montgomery and his wife Priscilla at a Parker Seminar, and he invited me to join the TCA. Through Larry I had the privilege of meeting the Isdale family and Dr. Sid himself. These two groups of doctors had me get more involved in TCA.
In 1989 we were blessed with a second daughter Michelle Rene Benton and in 1991 we were blessed with a son Michael Craig Benton. In 1991 the United States engaged in the first Gulf War. We heard about DC’s working in an unofficial capacity treating soldiers in this war. I became involved in the effort to have DCs commissioned in the military. The Pentagon’s position was that medical care for military is only needed for a wartime situation and chiropractic did not fit that mold. Well, they had a war and chiropractic helped many soldiers and sailors with pain and discomfort. I helped get a letter writing campaign targeting the members of the Armed Services Subcommittee with oversaw health issues in military. Our campaign was successful, and we got a hearing in the House Armed Services Subcommittee. I also met Dr. Jay Wipf a DC and a nurse. His reserve military duties were as a nurse in Saudi Arabia, but when soldiers found out he was a chiropractic he was inundated with request for chiropractic adjustments. So much so that he was moved out of his tent because request for chiropractic care were interfering with the sleep of his fellow officers.
The TCA paid for me to go to the hearings in Washington DC since I had done so much work on this issue. Dr. Wipf testified and did a wonderful and professional job. An interesting note is Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina came and testified on our behalf in the House hearing. I was told it was exceedingly rare for a sitting United States Senator to come and testify at a House hearing. This bill passed the House and then passed the Senate and the first President Bush signed it into law.
Although today we are still not commissioned as officers in the military, this led to the use of civilian DCs to treat active-duty military personnel at military bases around the U.S. It led to the use of chiropractic care within the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.
In 1994 we were blessed with our fourth child a daughter Mackenzie Marie Benton. I remained active in TCA after this being Governmental Affairs Chairperson 1997-1999.
I was chairperson of the public relations committee 2000-2002. In 2002 tragedy struck my family as our oldest daughter, Morgan, was killed in an accident at the age of 15. This was such a shock of the loss of this beautiful young person. I sort of retreated from TCA activities as I was dealing with my own depression and working hard to keep my family from falling apart. If you have lost a child, you will understand if you have not you never will. It is much worse than you can imagine, and I do not wish it on my worst enemies. For a good 1-2 years it seems like life was black and white with extraordinarily little color in it. We leaned on our Catholic Faith and after three months of playing guitar I joined the church choir. Sometimes I feel I have become more involved in church for selfish reason because God now has our daughter, and I am trying to get closer to her. I can honestly saythat our God has a sense of humor. There is no way I would have ever thought I would be playing a guitar at church and now leading the choir myself.
I was absent from TCA for about 10 years or so following our daughters passing. I became interested in clinical research and began to post research articles in the Texas Chiropractors Facebook page. I was part of a research project through the University of Pittsburgh on online learning of research. Seems a Tyce Hergert saw this and pulled me back into an active role for TCA. I became Scientific Affairs Chairperson on TCA from 2015-2020. I testified on behalf of the TCA during our TBCE vs TMA diagnosis lawsuit which we won. In 2016 our office was one of the few offices selected to the RAND/UCLA chiropractic study on chronic neck and back pain. In the 2019 Texas Legislative Session TCA was in the forefront of getting sponsored for anti-opioid legislation, and I testified on behalf of the TCA several times on this issue. There was a bill that did pass the 2019 session making it harder to just prescribe opioids. The TCA bill ended up being watered down by the medical association lobbying.
In 2020 I became the TCA Chairperson of Governmental Affairs. The success of the legislature was small with the Covid virus outbreak, but TCA did catch break by winning our lawsuit in the Texas Supreme Court against the Texas Medical Association nerve lawsuit.
