As an employee and later owner of Lee Benson Motors, he helped people select new vehicles and maintain their current ones.

After his automotive career ended, he rejuvenated a downtown building and began offering antiques for sale.

And in the worst of times, the people of Gowrie could depend on him to come to the rescue as a volunteer firefighter and fire chief.

Benson, 69, left a legacy of service to his community when he died of cancer on Saturday in Iowa City.

“The whole community is kind of in shock from his loss because he’s been such an important part of downtown,” said Marcie Boerner, chief operating officer of Webster-Calhoun Cooperative Telephone Association.

Former Mayor Gayle Streit described Benson as “a wonderful man — really, really good for Gowrie.”

“He was just always willing to help out,” she said.

Streit said he was a major business owner. His father opened Lee Benson Chevrolet in Gowrie in 1958. He began working there in about 1971 and took over the business when his father retired. When the dealership became Macke Motors Gowrie, he continued to work there and at Champion Collision Center in Rockwell City.

When he got out of the automotive business, he bought a vacant and deteriorated building next to the car dealership and renovated it to become the home of his new venture, Beek Street Antiques & Collectibles, which opened in 2018.

“He put a lot of time and effort into bringing that building back,” Boerner said.

Streit said Benson’s work on the old building was “a benefit to the community.”

Long before he opened the antique shop, Benson became a volunteer firefighter. He joined the Gowrie Fire Department in 1973. He became captain, assistant chief and finally served as chief from 2009 to 2021.

“He’d been in the fire service nearly 50 years,” said Dylan Hagen, the Webster County emergency management coordinator. “He was always looked up to and was highly respected.”

Brett Carlson, who succeeded Benson as fire chief in Gowrie, said the fire department was “what he lived to do.”

Carlson said that because the car dealership was right around the corner from the fire station, Benson responded to “99 percent” of the emergency calls Gowrie firefighters were dispatched to.

As he gained experience in the fire department, Carlson witnessed Benson’s leadership style.

“He wouldn’t ask you to do anything if he wouldn’t do it himself,” Carlson said. “That’s the way he trained us.”

“He took control of the scene,” he added. “When he got on scene, he was the one giving directions. If anyone had questions about what they should or should not be doing, they would go to Greg.”

Carlson said at the scenes of serious vehicle accidents, Benson always knew the fastest way to get injured people out of the wreckage.

As every emergency was brought under control, Benson had a unique way of telling the firefighters it was time to put the gear back on the trucks and go back to the station. According to Carlson, he would always say, “Alright boys, let’s pack ’em up and get out of here.”

For years, Benson organized tractor pulls at the Webster County Fairgrounds that were fundraisers for the Gowrie Fire Department. Money raised at the pulls helped to pay for the new fire station that opened about eight years ago.

Carlson said Benson was “one of the primary leaders” on planning and building the new station.

“He was very knowledgeable on all the equipment — what worked and what didn’t for a small town,” he added.

After his death Saturday, Benson’s body was initially brought to Laufersweiler-Sievers Funeral Home in Fort Dodge in a convoy of emergency vehicles that included fire trucks from Gowrie, Dayton, Harcourt, Otho, Callender, Duncombe, Badger, Clare, Moorland, Vincent, Lehigh, Farnhamville, and Barnum, a Southwest Webster Emergency Medical Service ambulance and police cars from Gowrie and Dayton.