Benezet (“little Bennett”) was an uneducated lad who lived in Avignon, France, in the late 1100s, and kept watch over his mother’s sheep. Now, Avignon is along the Rhone River and, at the time Benezet lived, many people drowned each year attempting to cross the rushing waters of the Rhone.

So Benezet decided that he needed to build a bridge over the River! In this way, he hoped to help save lives. He felt that people needed to be tended to (all of them, not just a certain group), and he spent the remainder of his life working on this bridge! In fact, he died four years before its completion, yet the work continued in his memory! His spirit and his determination to take action to help others (through infrastructure, no less) so moved the people of Avignon that they completed Benezet’s work, In fact, they also decided to inter him within the bridge itself.

And that’s it! That sincere care for others coupled with action–building a bridge (without a degree in civil engineering or architecture…in fact without any schooling at all) simply because this would help people out–is what makes Benezet a saint worth remembering. And he is, to this day, the Patron Saint of that French city.

Little Bennett lived Nike’s subsequent slogan: “Just Do It!”