Dennis Gallagher, 1940-2022, Rest in Peace
We marveled at the first news story we read about the passing of Dennis Gallagher. It was long on his love of all things Irish and short — short? make that non-existent — on his love of all things Jewish. This story made us wonder: If it was unknown to the writer how deeply Dennis Gallagher interwove himself with the Denver Jewish community, how many other non-Irish communities did he touch deeply that we don’t know about?
What a person, what a man, what a leader, what a fun human being, what a smile, what a mind, what a heart, what an embrace. All this and more was Dennis Gallagher. Oh how we shall miss that artistic calligraphy of his, those handwritten Rosh Hashanah greetings he sent to the Intermountain Jewish News yearly. Jewish? If it was the campaign for Soviet Jewry, Dennis Gallagher was there. If it was Holocaust remembrance? He was there. If it was a Beth Jacob High School graduation, he was there. If it was a party or an epic passing in the Jewish community, Dennis was there. Not because he was a politician — sequentially, a State Representative, a State Senator, a City Councilman, a City Auditor — no, it was exactly the other way around. He got into politics because it was a great way, it was his way, to come into constant contact with good people and with people of all types. He loved being around people.
That sense of humor. That charm. That way he told the story of how he duckedinto the crawl space under the Golda Meir House to see what he could find, and lo and behold he found the family’s old JNF Blue Box. That impish look any time he spotted something Irish. That way he cried when his dear daughter Meghan died at the age of 19. Every time we pass by the building in the Golden Triangle where he held the memorial for her, we think of him. He was that kind of person; he left an indelible impression.
He was not one of those people about whom one says mournfully, “I only wish I had told him how much I loved him.” The love was so natural, so open, so sweet, with Dennis Gallagher.
We also associate him with Colorado historian Tom Noel, for the two of them together put together so many projects that projected the history of Denver.
That’s the thing about Dennis: associations. With good causes. With good government. With countless friends. With his community on the North Side, with his community citywide. With his constituents. With the Catholic Church. With the Greek tradition of debate. With the Western sense of civilization. The title of that wonderful sociological study of Jewish life in the European shtetl, Life is With People, could have been penned for Dennis Gallagher.
His charisma was not one that put him in front of you as a leader, but put him beside you in a common embrace, a common cause, a common humanity.
We shall find it very hard to look out upon our city now, knowing that Dennis Gallagher is not a living part of it anymore. But if anyone ever bequeathed a large part of his soul to Denver, and in Denver, it was Dennis Gallagher. And now, into G-d’s embrace, dear friend.
Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News
