- February 6, 2025
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About 50 years ago, a young man by the name of Marvin Benford was a student at Ormond Middle School where he was taught by Bruce Tramont.
Tramont, who had moved to Florida from Ohio in 1965, began mentoring Benford and acted as not only a teacher to the student but a coach to an athlete. When Tramont switched to Father Lopez High School to teach history and coach basketball, he helped pay for Benford's tuition to go to the same school.
The teacher and coach had made such an impact on the young man's life that his sister named her son after him — Bruce Tramont Benford.
Tramont also had a son, Chase Tramont, now a city councilman as well as a basketball coach and teacher at Spruce Creek High. Growing up, Tramont's father told him all about the student and athlete he mentored calling him a "kind and first-class gentleman."
It wasn't until later that Tramont found out that there was a son whose name was the same as his father's. According to Tramont, after his father died in 2012, he and his brother began searching the internet for any stories about their father. That was when the name Bruce T. Benford appeared in their results.
"I'd always known there was a Bruce Benford out there," Tramont said. "We saw Bruce Tramont Benford was also in there so we thought maybe that's the same guy."
Tramont sent a message asking if Benford had an uncle named Marvin. The answer? Yes.
This was the man that had been named after Tramont's father and the person he had been looking for.
Benford, a Marine veteran who served during Operation Desert Storm, had grown up in the Daytona area but had left for 15 years to serve in the military. He had moved back to the area in 1999.
He told Tramont that not only was his name Bruce Tramont, but he had named his son Bruce Tramont Benford Jr. It went even further though. His son had also named his son Bruce Tramont Benford III. There were three generations of Benford's with the name Bruce Tramont.
On top of this information, Benford found out that Tramont's mother had even met him when he was a baby. Benford describes finding out this piece of information as a "really, really great feeling."
Several emails, calls and Facebook messages later, Tramont and Benford decided to meet.
About a week before Christmas, the two men finally met in person at a Spruce Creek basketball game.
"It felt like meeting a brother that had been separated at birth. It was like an instant connection," Benford said. "It was so gratifying to meet somebody to kind of explain to me the type of man his father was."
