I met Dennis at age 5 or 6, in Primary at The John Thomas Dye School. He was my first encounter with leadership.
At its core, a leader is someone who people follow and by whom they are influenced. If you were around Dennis, it was virtually impossible not to follow him. A rascal with a heart of gold and a mordant sense of humor, Dennis was fueled by a hunger to try anything that seemed fun or exciting; he always found ways to do something rather than reasons not to do it; he was seemingly oblivious to the risks involved (let alone the obvious, outright danger to him, his friends, or the public at large); and he was always out in front, joking and laughing even as all hell broke loose, moving without pause to the next adventure.
That’s why Dennis was a born leader. He led not by example, but by doing…and he just assumed you’d be there beside him. And, why wouldn’t you be? When you were with Dennis, exploring new frontiers, pushing the boundaries, daring the fates, sharing the fun, the sun was brighter, the water warmer, the dangers less palpable, and the escape routes more plausible.
There was often a price we paid for following Dennis – levied in the form of numerous broken bones and countless stitches. But, amazingly, it seemed that Dennis himself rarely got hurt, no matter the outrageousness of the exploit or the speed at which it was engaged. I do remember a couple of instances in our early teens when Dennis’ “Addams Family” approach to life came back to bite him, but they were few and far between.
Once, whiling away the hours at my house, a group of us created a makeshift toboggan out of a bed-board and launched ourselves from the top of the staircase. As we flew down the stairs, we never thought about what would happen when we got to the bottom. Dennis was at the front and, needless to say, was haphazardly hurled headfirst into the facing stucco wall…and knocked out cold. We were very young…and terrified until Dennis finally came to, grinning. I can’t remember if he made us do it again, but I do know that for as long as we lived in that house, I couldn’t walk up the stairs to my room without seeing the impression of Dennis’ forehead in the wall at the bottom and thinking about his amazing ability to survive his own reckless pursuit of fun.
Another occurred when we were studying the physics of demolition by setting up a cherry bomb in a Tonka truck (they were made of sturdy metal in those days). Dennis lit the fuse and hightailed it back to join us in our little clubhouse to ride out the explosion, then decided it would be much cooler to actually SEE the thing explode rather than just view the aftermath. So, he stopped outside the clubhouse door and knelt down to watch. I’m not really sure what he saw, but after the truck went BOOM, we found him curiously exploring a healthy piece of shrapnel that had embedded in his knee.
It was quintessential Dennis — leading the way; lucky, as always; and amused (or at least good-natured), even when injured.
Admittedly, at the age when Dennis and I were good friends, the impact of leadership is not always entirely positive. Dennis’ wicked sense of humor, stiffened with a healthy dose of sarcasm, was a potent weapon in the Darwinian relationships of teenage peer groups. But, even for those on the receiving end, Dennis’ good heart, gentle soul and perennially positive attitude made it impossible to see his jabs as more than a way to entertain his crew and keep them in line.
And, his approach to life, his philosophy of living, rubbed off on us all. Dennis may have embodied one of a parents’ greatest fears for their child’s playmate, and his father, the good Dr., got a lot of practice on Dennis’ friends, but if you were a friend of Dennis’, you were the better for it — more curious, more confident, willing to test the limits imposed by self and family/society, and more apt to find humor in unexpected places.
Farewell, Dennis. Thank you for everything. I hope you knew what a friend you had in me.
John