Obituaries

Victoria Lynn Benitez passed away peacefully on January 28th, 2026, after a year quietly fighting pancreatic cancer. A lifelong Texan, Victoria (Vickie to many friends and family) was born on May 29th, 1959, in San Antonio, Texas to Carrahlee Sellers and Mario Benitez, and she grew up in Kingsville, Texas where she attended H.M. King High School and Texas A&I (now Texas A&M University Kingsville). After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin’s Plan II Honors Program, she attended UT School of Law where she met her future husband, Reggie James, and his daughter, Terra. Throughout her entire career, Vickie used her law degree to help those in need of legal services at organizations such as Women’s Advocacy Project (now the Texas Advocacy Project) and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid—devoting her brilliant mind, passion, and skills to the world of nonprofit and serving those most vulnerable, as well as mentoring hundreds of law students along the way.

An avid reader, her brother, Kenneth Benitez, remembers Vickie devouring book after book on family trips, while life-long friends treasure reading recommendations made over the decades. She loved the beach and went on countless trips in her sporty tan Datsun with her best friend Susan Stockton, also enjoying trips farther south to places like Saltillo, Mexico with her parents and Susan. Later, she continued her love of traveling with family alongside her stepmother, Carolyn Benitez, Carolyn’s daughter, Diana Wiley, and her late sister Lydia Benitez Williams, often to more beach-side destinations like Galveston.

Vickie was the most devoted and supportive mother who spent many of her weekends and evenings at softball, field hockey, soccer, and lacrosse games, as well as thousands of horseback riding lessons, even braving riding lessons herself. She spent many pre-dawn mornings driving Layla to horse shows and Terra to St. Stephen’s Episcopal School for away games or field trips. One-on-one car trips with her children were some of her favorite moments.

A dedicated meditator, she leaned on the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita and was often so calm and quiet in her meditation practice that she frightened members of the family who didn’t realize she was sitting stone-still in a room. She adored a series of much-loved dogs, including Asa, Ramona, and Gracie, before falling in love with the Great Pyrenees breed, welcoming into the family five of these giant and lazy pups over a decade: Tito Puente, Inigo Montoya, Greg, Gomez, and finally Violeta, as well as serving as a volunteer for Texas Great Pyrenees Rescue to make sure other dogs found loving homes.

Victoria is survived by her husband, Reggie James, children: Terra Tucker (John), Layla Benitez-James (Ian Farnes), and Joseph “Nicky” Benitez-James (Andrea Pee), as well as her grandchildren: Tyla Ann Tucker, André Lee Benitez-James Farnes, Zoe Marie Tucker, and she was thrilled to know she had two grandbabies on the way, expected by Layla and Andrea. Additionally, she is survived by many other family members, nieces, nephews, their children, their grandchildren, and many beloved friends.

An abridged reading of ‘The Fifteenth Teaching’ from the Bhagavad Gita

Our True Spirit

Lord Krishna said:

Roots in the air, branches below,

the tree of life is unchanging,

they say; its leaves are hymns,

and we who know this know sacred lore.

Its branches

stretch below and above,

nourished by nature’s qualities,

budding with sense objects;

aerial roots

tangled in actions

reach downward

into our world.

Its form is unknown

here in the world;

unknown are its end,

its beginning, its extent;

cut down this tree

that has such deep roots

with the sharp ax

of detachment.

Then search to find

the realm that one enters without returning:

“I seek refuge

in our original spirit

from which all primordial

energy sprung forth.”

Without pride or delusion,

the fault of attachment overcome,

intent on the self within,

their desires extinguished,

freed from dualities,

from joy and suffering,

those who live undeluded

reach that realm beyond change.

Neither sun nor moon

nor fire illuminates

my highest abode—

once there, they do not return.

A fragment of me in the living world

is the timeless essence of life;

it draws out the senses

and the mind inherent in nature.

When the lord takes on a body

and then leaves it,

he carries these along, like the wind

bearing scents from earth.

Know that my brilliance,

flaming in the sun,

in the moon, and in fire,

illuminates this whole universe.

I penetrate the earth

and sustain creatures by my strength,

becoming the liquid of moonlight.

I am the universal fire

within the body of living beings.

I dwell deep

in the heart of everyone—

and there is a double spirit in everyone

in the world, transient and eternal—

eternal at the summit of existence.