Peter Benmar, cherished son, father, and husband, passed away on January 7, 2019 surrounded by love. A two-year struggle with a rare and tenacious cancer took our beloved Pete's body, but never his mind or his heart.

Pete was born in Boston, Mass., and grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. His childhood and teenage years were marked by happy celebrations with his close-knit family, long nights playing strategy games with his buddies, the love of a dog named Toby, and the beginning of his journalism career at his high school newspaper, The Shakerite.

At Cornell University, Pete studied psychology and continued his work as a reporter by joining The Cornell Daily Sun, where he met his future wife. A deep admiration for astronomer and author Carl Sagan inspired Pete to choose Cornell, and he was lucky enough to take a rare undergraduate class with Professor Sagan before graduating in 1991.

Pete worked as a reporter for The Times of Northwest Indiana and The Seattle Times before settling into a long and successful career at Microsoft, first as an editor for Encarta and later as a site manager for the Windows website. At Microsoft, he had the temerity to both organize and win an in-house Scrabble tournament.

He gave up the long commute to spend more time with family, and had been working as a senior content strategist for University of Washington Continuum College at the time of his death.

Pete was a detail-oriented problem solver who loved to research, well, anything. He was committed to gender equality, taking on a new combined surname after marriage. He raised his daughters to be kind, curious, musical, and compassionate. His marriage was a partnership built on respect and abiding love.

He is survived by his parents, Frank and Regie Routman, of Seattle; his wife, Claudine, of Seattle; and his daughters, Katie (19) and Brooke (16), of Seattle.

A memorial service will be held in the spring. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests a donation to the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, in the hopes of preventing this devastating loss for other families.