Quiet Strength and Family Lights: Benjamin Saget

Updated on: August 11, 2025

Table of Contents

Basic Information

Field	Details
Full name	Benjamin Morton Saget
Birth date	August 28, 1917
Death date	January 30, 2007 (aged 89)
Occupation	Supermarket executive (longtime career in grocery/retail)
Spouse	Rosalyn “Dolly” Saget (née Comer)
Children	Robert “Bob” Saget; Gay (Gay Audrey) Saget; Andrea Marcia “Andi” Saget; two infant children who died shortly after birth
Notable grandchildren	Aubrey Saget, Lara Melanie Saget, Jennifer Belle Saget
Public profile	Private life as a family man and executive; publicly noted as the father of entertainer Bob Saget

Family Snapshot: Table of Key Relations

Relation	Name	Short introduction
Spouse	Rosalyn “Dolly” Saget	Benjamin’s partner and mother to their children; a steady presence beside him through decades of family life.
Son	Robert “Bob” Saget (1956–2022)	Became a household name in television and comedy; Benjamin is often introduced to wider audiences as his father.
Daughter	Gay (Gay Audrey) Saget	A daughter whose illness and passing later inspired family advocacy and awareness work.
Daughter	Andrea Marcia “Andi” Saget (1950–1984)	Died young; her loss is part of the family’s private history and narrative of resilience.
Grandchildren	Aubrey, Lara Melanie, Jennifer Belle Saget	The next generation—artists and private figures—who carry on the family name in quieter ways.

Benjamin Saget

A Life Offstage — My Take

If you picture Hollywood, you imagine marquee lights and flashbulbs; Benjamin Saget’s story is the opposite: a steady hum behind the storefront, a ledger kept straight, a family gathered around a kitchen table when the sitcom cameras aren’t rolling. I like to think of his life as the quiet backbeat in a song that someone else would later sing louder — a melody that shapes the chorus even when it doesn’t take center stage.

Benjamin Morton Saget was born on August 28, 1917, and lived to the age of 89, passing on January 30, 2007. Those are the hard numbers that anchor the narrative. Between those two dates lies a career described in public notices as that of a supermarket executive — decades of work in grocery and retail, climbing an industry ladder of a kind that built communities as much as balance sheets. He wasn’t on television (except as the subject of family photos and memories), but his professional life was one of sustained labor and contribution — the kind of job that keeps neighborhoods fed and local economies moving.

I find that families like the Sagets read like layered film scores. There’s the overture — the parents, his marriage to Rosalyn “Dolly” Saget — and the recurring motifs: the births, the losses, the long summers and short funerals. Then there’s the counter-melody: a son who would become famous (Robert “Bob” Saget), and the ways fame refracts back onto the family. To the public, Benjamin’s name surfaces often as “Bob Saget’s father,” and that’s understandable; sometimes the most compelling backstage characters only get acknowledged when the star exits the stage. But that shorthand flattens a man who existed as a husband, a workplace professional, and a father through multiple decades.

His family life was marked by deep love and by sorrow. He and Rosalyn had several children: Bob, Gay Audrey, Andrea Marcia (“Andi”), and two infants who died shortly after birth. Loss followed them — Andrea’s death in the 1980s and Gay’s later passing from scleroderma — and these events shaped how the family understood illness, advocacy, and memory. If you’ve ever watched a family sitcom and wondered what happens in the scenes between the commercial breaks, this is that territory: grief and tenderness in equal measure, lived quietly and without tabloid pageantry.

Numbers tell a different kind of story here, too: Benjamin’s lifetime spans nearly nine decades, from the World War I era into the twenty-first century; his son Bob was born in 1956 and later rose to fame, becoming a cultural touchpoint for an entire generation. Across those years, Benjamin’s role remained consistent — the grown-up who showed up. That continuity is a kind of legacy as meaningful as any plaque or award.

I’m attracted to the details that make someone feel present: the grocery-run errands, the business dinners, the small rituals at home. Benjamin’s public presence was modest — obituary listings, family notices, and mentions in profiles of his more famous offspring — but those modest traces create a portrait: reliable, hardworking, private, focused on family. The supermarket executive label matters because it frames him as someone rooted in practical life — an operator of systems, a manager of logistics, a person who understood the quotidian infrastructure of modern living.

One of the bittersweet parts of writing familial biographies is acknowledging the way fame re-centers a family’s story. After Bob Saget’s rise on television and in comedy, public interest naturally extended backward to his parents, to the household that shaped the man the world came to know. But even with a famous son, Benjamin remained primarily a private figure. He didn’t court the press. He didn’t publish memoirs. He lived a steady life that, when you trace it, reads like the unsung set design behind a popular show.

I like to imagine the Saget family table in the 1960s and 1970s — kids at the counter, a dad returning from work with grocery ledgers and stories about supply chains, a mother organizing the next day. Those images are cinematic but not sensational; they’re small, poignant moments that echo more loudly as years accumulate. The tragedies — the daughters who died, the family’s later public grief — add shadow to the frame, but they also illuminate the love the family carried through it all.

Benjamin’s grandchildren—Aubrey, Lara Melanie, and Jennifer Belle—represent a softer future for the family, a generation that steps into the sunlight warmed by both privacy and legacy. They’re artists and quieter public figures, and in that quiet I find a kind of dignity.

Benjamin Morton Saget’s life wasn’t a headline; it was the steady headline of ordinary devotion. And sometimes the most cinematic lives are the ones that keep everything else running — the unsung engineers of domestic happiness, the managers of grocery aisles and family calendars, the steady presence behind someone else’s bright light. I’ll take that backstage pass any day.