Thirty-three years after Bender, 69, sculpted his first bust of an unknown murder victim - a woman found near the airport in 1977 - he would seem to be at the top of his game: He fields calls daily relating to his work and is the subject of "The Murder Room," a book that goes on sale next week, and an "America's Most Wanted" tribute scheduled to air on Fox at 9 tonight.
But he's dying of pleural mesothelioma; he lost his longtime wife, Jan, to nonsmoker's lung cancer in April, and he has been forbidden to practice his craft by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is overseeing his care.
Still, he's at peace.
"I just feel that we're all gonna go someday. I'd rather go walking like I do now rather than when I'm some dried-up old prune using a walker," he said, hooting with laughter.
Bender already has outlived his doctor's prediction for how long he would last.
Pleural mesothelioma is a cancer in the chest that typically afflicts those exposed to asbestos on the job. Bender, who served in the Navy in the late 1950s and early 1960s, blames the years he spent working and living on a Navy ship.
After his diagnosis 10 months ago, caregivers warned him he would likely die by June. Now, they're predicting another three to six months, although Bender said yesterday that he plans to discontinue radiation treatments, which he said leave him "dangerously tired."
"I have no quality of life with radiation. There's no way I want to live being this tired," he said.
He misses his wife of 39 years terribly. He sleeps on a La-Z-Boy couch, too heartbroken to venture into the bed he shared with her. And he avoids his studio - a former meat market, fittingly, on South Street near 22nd, where the couple shared living space in the back - because it brims with reminders of her.
