Elizabeth Bennett Rice, 55; started a cancer foundation
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The worse thing you could call Beth Bennett was a cancer victim. Mrs. Bennett simply considered herself a woman living with cancer. She also was a woman who gave back, and after her ovarian cancer was diagnosed in 2005, she set her sights on educating women about the disease.
"She wanted to make a difference in women's lives," said longtime friend Mary Griffin of Portsmouth, N.H.
Elizabeth A. Bennett Rice, who went from being a secretary to a business executive and launched a foundation dedicated to ovarian cancer awareness, died from the disease Oct. 2 in her New Castle, N.H., home.
She was 55.
Mrs. Bennett was born in Battle Creek, Mich., and graduated in 1971 from Glen Burnie High School in Glen Burnie, Md. In 1973, she graduated from Katherine Gibbs School, a secretarial training program.
She began as a secretary in the Washington, D.C., office of financial management company
In 1989, she became vice president and member of the President's Club at Dean Witter Reynolds - a stock brokerage firm - in Portsmouth, N.H.
Mrs. Bennett left her position and received her MBA in 1991 from Simmons College.
After graduating, she returned to the securities industry and worked for several financial organizations. She served as marketing manager at Chubb Securities Corp. in Concord, N.H., assistant vice president of Bank of Boston, and vice president in charge of marketing and distribution at Pioneer Investments in Boston.
In 1998, she was designated a certified financial analyst and became Pioneer's investment managing director. She next worked at MassMutual Funds and David L. Babson Co., now known as Babson Capital. In 2006, the year after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she finished her career as vice president of marketing for Lincoln Financial Group and began creating the Madam Ovary Foundation.
The foundation's mission is to help fund research and education pertaining to all aspects of ovarian cancer. She started the foundation because her cancer wasn't detected at an early stage, said close friend Margot Thompson of Portsmouth, N.H.
"She felt it was her responsibility to other women, especially young women, to get this [information] out there," said Thompson.
Mrs. Bennett created a foundation website, a logo, and put together a board of directors. She also did all of the fund-raising, Griffin said, describing Mrs. Bennett as "action-oriented."
"She wanted to do for ovarian cancer what has been done for breast cancer," said Griffin.
Though Mrs. Bennett was sick, all she wanted to do was work for the foundation, said her husband of 22 years, Peter Peirce Rice.
She met her illness head on, said Thompson.
"She handled her illness with grace, style, and dignity," Thompson said.
Mrs. Bennett also cofounded the Seacoast Young Team, which rode in the Pan-Mass Challenge, and began riding with the bike team in 1995. She stopped riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge in 2002, but rode again in 2006. Her helmet was plastered with two words: Madam Ovary.
Mrs. Bennett loved opera, needlepoint, sporting clays, and reading, especially Russian history books. She also loved to travel.
"She always loved going to different places and meeting different people," said her husband. He noted that she loved the British Isles.
In addition to her husband, she leaves her mother, Olive Bennett of Columbia, Md., and her brother, William Bennett of Baltimore.
Services have been held.
