Rachel Anne Bender was a smart, beautiful woman with a heart that never stopped giving, even when she carried more on her shoulders than most people ever knew.
Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Rachel was the daughter of Donna Ciszewski Kershaw and Robert Coughenour. Her family moved to Florida in 1991, and Brevard County became home from that point forward. Rachel came up through Central Jr. High School and graduated from Melbourne High School in 1997, where so many of us first got to know that bubbly smile that could light up a hallway.
If you went to school with Rachel, you remember her. That smile wasn’t something you forgot. Rachel’s greatest joy in life was her son, Blake Bender. He was her world, and everything she did was for him. She loved her family deeply, and that love was felt by everyone around her.
“If you went to school with Rachel, you remember her. That smile wasn’t something you forgot.”
She was preceded in death by her brother, Seth Coughenour, and her grandparents, Irene and Benjamin Ciszewski and Randall and Betty Coughenour. She is survived by her son, Blake Bender; her mother, Donna Kershaw and stepfather Roger Kershaw of Melbourne Beach; her father, Robert Coughenour and stepmother Lynn Coughenour of Melbourne; and her ex-husband, Bernie Bender III.
Rachel passed away on May 11, 2015, at just 36 years old. She was far too young, and the loss was felt across the Brevard County community. But those of us who knew her, who walked those halls with her, who saw that smile — we carry her with us.
Her memory lives in the hearts of everyone she touched, and her legacy continues through her son and the countless lives she made brighter with her presence.
She is still loved by so many, and she always will be. Rest easy, Rachel. Melbourne remembers you.