Frances Grant Bennett, the mother of GOP Sen. Robert F. Bennett and widow of the late Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, died Friday afternoon of natural causes. She was 96.
Mrs. Bennett was born Sept. 23, 1899, in Salt Lake City, the youngest child of the late LDS Church President Heber J. Grant and his wife, Emily Wells Grant. She attended Salt Lake City schools, where she met her future husband, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1950, and served four terms, retiring in 1974. Sen. Wallace F. Bennett died in December 1993.Mrs. Bennett attended Radcliffe College in Boston and graduated from the University of Utah and was married in Sept. 6, 1922. The Bennetts reared five children; the youngest is Sen. Robert F. Bennett.
Mrs. Bennett served on the general board of the Primary, the children's organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she chaired the fund-raising committee for the original Primary Children's Hospital.
In Washington, D.C., she was president of the Congressional Club, a group of congressional wives. In 1968, Mrs. Bennett released her autobiography, "Glimpses of a Mormon Family," published by Deseret Book. She was a longtime member of the venerable Cleofan literary club, a local women's group that dates from the late 1800s.
Funeral arrangements are pending.