Born: 11/08/1937 Lewisburg, Ohio Died: 07/08/2026 Montpelier, Vermont Details of service: No service planned. Contact Kristin Glaser for more information. Benjamin “Ben” Huffman, 88, died July 8, 2026 at his Montpelier home, from polycystic kidney failure. Ben was a worker, and a thinker, sustained by his marriage of 50 years to Kristin Glaser, and by the pleasure of his children. Ben had a three decade career in Vermont helping the state’s political leaders analyze public policy questions and create legislative responses. He began his first position in 1969, at age 31, as a state planner assisting Governor Deane Davis. After Davis’s two terms in office, Ben freelanced for several years until he was invited to join the State House Office of Legislative Counsel, where he served the last half of his career. In addition to the other responsibilities of staffing the governor’s office and the state legislature, Ben conducted in-depth studies and investigations supporting policy making in a wide range of subjects. As a freelancer, Ben managed, for a coalition of private groups, the creation and legislative adoption of Vermont’s farm and forest current use property tax program; he led major policy studies at the UVM Environmental Program and at the Vermont Department of Public Service; he was recruited for a national policy study housed at the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality; and he served as a mid-career Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Ben was born November 8, 1937, to Zella Hess and Cletus Huffman, in Lewisburg Ohio. It was a difficult household. One consequence was the early shaping of his character of self-reliance and individual thinking. As a child of World War II Ben also absorbed the civic moral that “everyone must do their part.” But he did poorly in school and was tracked into non-academic, mainly shop classes. From a young age Ben found refuge from home in many different paying jobs. And when old enough, he joined the Boy Scouts, which nurtured his life-long affection for the natural out-of-doors. He became an Eagle Scout. Later he left the Scouts for cars and girls. At age 17, in 1955, Ben began a four-year US Air Force enlistment. He was stationed in Newfoundland, Canada, where he maintained the radar and computers controlling weapons on interceptor aircraft (the F-102A) defending against Soviet nuclear bombers. When off-duty in that remote location he began reading books for the first time in his life. In them he discovered a fascinating world previously unknown to him, and he resolved to get a real education upon his discharge. Ben earned a bachelors degree, with Phi Beta Kappa honors, at Ohio State University; was admitted to a Ph.D. program at Columbia University; and received a Woodrow Wilson National Graduate Fellowship. At Columbia, Ben earned a masters degree in public law and government and completed all Ph.D. requirements except a dissertation in his major of Western political theory (Plato to Marx). By that point he understood that, while he loved learning, more appealing than an academic career was one directly involved with today’s governance challenges. He took an evening course in planning at Columbia while working two years in New York City for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, which in turn led to his joining the governor’s staff in Vermont. Ben was active in his Vermont community as: a member of Montpelier’s Public Housing Authority, and of the city’s Planning Commission, receiving for this service a citizen group’s annual award; a founding member of the “good food” buyer’s group that became Hunger Mountain Co-op; a member of the Executive Board of the UVM Center for Research on Vermont; and a good Cliff Street neighbor. Following Ben’s government career, he became a long-haul, tractor-trailer trucker, drawn to it as one way to give free rein to the working person he had always been despite his professional career. His pleasure since a boy from carpentry led to many improvements to his and Kristin Glaser’s Montpelier home. And the camp he created on a Northeast-Kingdom pond. Ben had a first marriage to Kathy Ryan, who gave birth to sons Eric and Jake. The couple also adopted daughter Polly.  His second wife Kristin gave birth to fraternal twin sons Jesse and Lukas. The three adults did their best to nurture an affectionate relationship between themselves and all their children. Ben was a devoted father, urged all his children to follow their individual interests, but also to obtain good formal education. He introduced all his children to mountain hiking. All his sons became lifelong mountain athletes. Ben was predeceased by his sister LuAnn Nathan. He is survived by his sister Gwen Tambling, his wife Kristin, first wife Kathy, and his children, their spouses, and their children: Eric, Jenny Rothkopf, and daughter Sadie; Jake, Emily Nathan, and son Otto; Jesse, and step-son Galen Kuehnl; Lukas, Lauren Abramowitz, and daughters Clara and Stella; Polly Clark, and daughter Tyrek, and sons Josh and Daeshawn. Ben endured his illness through Kristin’s loving attention, and his children’s affectionate support. The family thanks hospice nurse Jessica Baily for her compassionate care, as well as doctors Katherine Cheung and Emilija Florance. Ben was also grateful for Act 39. Read the story on VTDigger here: Benjamin “Ben” Huffman. ...read more read less