PATH OF A WARRIOR Making a Difference INTRODUCING THE FREDERICK J. BENN III AND KATHY L. BENN SCHOLARSHIP
LIGHTING FIRES OF AMBITION BY J U S T I N A . CO H N
As president of Advanced Automatic Sprinkler, Inc., which specializes in the design and installation of residential fire sprinkler systems, Fred Benn cares deeply about making people safer. It just so happens to make financial sense, too.
“If
you look at it from a homeowner’s point of view, if you buy a house with fire sprinklers in it, it’s going to cost you less to live in that house than the same house without fire sprinklers because the insurance company likes them so much that they’re going to take half the cost of the fire insurance off your homeowner’s (policy),” Benn said. Benn’s career has been one of innovation and safety initiatives, the kind of thinking he helped hone at Indiana Tech, where he graduated in 1970 with a degree in mechanical engineering— unaware that it would take him into an industry where he could help design technology used by NASA and nuclear power plants and to make average people’s homes better. With the creation of the Frederick J. Benn III and Kathy L. Benn Scholarship, which will provide for a student’s fouryear education, Fred Benn hopes future Tech students can be empowered to find their own paths to innovation and altruism. “I just thought that when this whole thing started it would be good to find somebody who’s deserving and needs some help, to put them through college and help them do something with their life and hopefully do something good for humanity,” said the 74-year-old Benn. Benn, who came to Indiana Tech from Massachusetts, was working for General Motors through a summer training program while studying in Fort Wayne. He assumed that
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Winter 2022
