Family, friends and Duquesne Kline Law honor the legacy of Shayna Bennett

Shayna Maya Bennett loved children and envisioned a legal career advocating on their behalf.

“She wanted to ensure that every child had a voice,” said her mother, Jamie Bennett, of Upper St. Clair. “From the time she was little, if she saw a child not fitting in, she would befriend them.”

Shayna Bennett, 23, was one step closer to realizing her dream as a first-year student at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University when she died March 26, leaving Jamie Bennett, her father, Nathan Bennett, sisters Bailey and Eliana, extended family and numerous friends to mourn.

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To honor Shayna Bennett’s vision, her mother worked with the law school to establish the Shayna Bennett Scholarship for Advocacy and Service. By early May, more than $50,000 had been raised, and more donations were “steadily coming in,” according to law school Dean April Mara Barton. The initiative is being matched dollar-for-dollar by attorney Thomas R. Kline — a 1978 graduate and for whom the law school is named — and has reached a $100,000 goal, “which allows us to fully endow the fund,” Barton said.

Kline, who recalled meeting Shayna while visiting Duquesne, pledged his support from the start. “I want to do everything in our collective power to assure that there is a fitting scholarship in her name,” he said, “and that we do something truly meaningful.”

The scholarship will cover a portion of tuition for a student who is called to the same type of work as Shayna Bennett, Barton said. “The more we can raise, the more we can give.”

That the fund reached its goal so quickly is “a testament to Shayna’s life and legacy,” Barton added. “There has been such an outpouring of love and support and commitment to this cause.”

Jamie Bennett is using social media and a vast network of people who knew her daughter to spread word of the fund. “It’s the only thing giving me any light through unbearable darkness,” she said, noting that the response has been deeply moving.

“When I emailed Mr. Kline to thank him for his generosity he told me he remembered Shayna’s enthusiasm, and infectious smile.”

Jamie Bennett has heard much the same from her daughter’s classmates and colleagues at Duquesne and from her undergraduate alma mater, Hofstra University, where she graduated cum laude. “I received over 150 handwritten notes from students at the law school who talked about how if they were having a bad day, just looking across the room and seeing Shayna smile changed everything.”

Condolences from faculty at Hofstra referenced Shayna Bennett’s internship at Birth Justice Warriors, a maternal health equity initiative, with one professor citing her “enthusiasm to be of service,” and her “quiet, steady leadership.”

Support also has come from Amedisys Hospice where Jamie Bennett works, and Beth El Congregation of the South Hills, where the Bennett family has worshipped for four generations.

Beth El’s Rabbi Alex Greenbaum officiated at Shayna Bennett’s naming, her bat mitzvah and her funeral.

“Shayna was a bright light in a dark world; an inspiration,” Greenbaum said, recalling both her spunk and her sweetness. “She was kind. She was the best of us.”

Jamie Bennett recites Kaddish twice a day and frequently posts her daughter’s photographs on Facebook. “People tell me they never want to forget her smile,” she said.

She pores over memories of Shayna Bennett, who showed compassion and intuitiveness even as a child. She was an avid skier and swimmer who worked summers as a lifeguard and indoor activities assistant at Seven Springs, read voraciously, wrote “impeccably” and loved spending time with family, Jamie Bennett said.

The close bond she developed with her maternal grandfather, Don Selig, began about a minute after she was born, Jamie Bennett said, “when she reached up and grabbed his pinky.”

“He became one of her biggest role models. They’d have these discussions and she was so articulate, so mature he’d forget he was talking to a 12-year-old.”

A former Beth El Hebrew Religious School teacher, Selig informed his granddaughter’s deep faith and her cultural commitment to Judaism, which included joining B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, United Synagogue Youth, Hillel at Hofstra, and the Jewish Law Association at Duquesne.

“My father guided Shayna’s path in life,” Jamie Bennett said. “Judaism was so important to her.”

The debates with her grandfather helped to lay the groundwork for law school. Although Shayna Bennett aspired to become a pediatrician, she discovered just weeks into her freshman year that law was a greater calling. “She graduated with a degree in community health, which would have given her the background she wanted for her work in the legal community,” her mother said. “That, and she could argue any point.”

The prospect of helping other young people pursue their passion is comforting to Jamie Bennett, although navigating her loss is an ongoing struggle. “Every day, I try to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other,” she said. “I’m broken … but I have to be strong for my other kids.”

Daughters Bailey, 30, and Eliana 20, live with Jamie and Nathan Bennett — “the most incredible father to all three of our children,” Jamie said — and they are helping each other through their grief.

“Our safe place is being together at home.” PJC

Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.