Big hearts often dwell in petite bodies In thankful memory

Big hearts often dwell in petite bodies

In thankful memory of Brigitte Beneder

In the night from 30th to 31st May, 2018, our long-standing employee Brigitte Beneder passed away. She entered the company on 1st July 1993 as the Head Secretary, where she supported Mr Methfessel and myself. At the time, her tasks mainly comprised of correspondence management. Letters were still being written, even if they were in part already being sent as faxes. No-one could beat Ms Beneder in this field; she decisively influenced the CITO correspondence.

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Brigitte Beneder

Her ability to win people’s hearts made her a popular colleague and a valued contact for our international customers. In the year 2000, Ms Beneder ceased working full-time at CITO for family reasons. However, she continued to support us until August 2010 by proofreading all our publications. I personally will never forget her support during my Master’s degree in the year 2005. I mainly conducted this work during the night, and set Ms Beneder to work proofreading in the early morning hours.

We got to know Brigitte Beneder as a highly reserved and balanced personality. Up to her last days, she remained with all her heart a member of the CITO family. Even after her official retirement, she was a welcome guest to our company and Christmas celebrations. One of her particular passions was our language as well as foreign languages. It was therefore of no surprise to us to hear that she had begun to learn Mandarin. During one of our meetings, she demonstrated her learning success by formulating the sentence “I am a teacher” in Chinese. A most telling sentence, I find, as she truly was a teacher.

I am glad that I was able to accompany her a little during her final days. In the way in which she bid farewell to this world, she once again taught me an important lesson. I am certain that all members of the CITO family will continue to retain fond memories of Brigitte Beneder. We will miss her; our thoughts are now with her relatives.

In thankful memory of a long-standing companion on our journey – representative for the entire CITO Family - Jürgen Mariën.