Remembering Dennis Gaynor

April 2, 2004 Mark Dionne

Dennis and I met in the sixth grade, at the junior high school in Westwood. Though we went to different high schools, we were constantly together until we went off to college. The main thing I remember doing was riding bicycles everywhere.

One of the most regular things we did was to ride bikes into Boston and Cambridge almost weekly, and look for neat junk. We scoured the electronic surplus stores, and brought home all kinds of interesting raw materials for "projects". This started out as "science fair" homework, but we got really good at it. Neither of us ever really stopped.

Some of our other bike rides were more ambitious. We rode 100 miles in a day, to Rhode Island and back. We rode down to the Cape and camped for a few nights. Well the first night, we only camped half the night. The police found us camped in an illegal spot, and told us to move along. It was about 1 AM, and it was raining hard. We ended up sleeping in the men's room at the park at the Cape Cod Canal. We caught up on our sleep on Monument beach the next day.

Then we took a few bike trips up to the White Mountains, camping in the National Forest for several weeks. We were 16, and this was big adventure.

Dennis went off to the University of Massachusetts and then later to Chicago, but unlike many of my other childhood friends who drifted away, Dennis' and my lives kept touching repeatedly. It really pained him that he was so far away from his mother and sister, and he would come back to Westwood to visit them at holidays. We would always get together for dinner, where he would stay late, and sometimes we would go junk hunting like the old days.

Dennis had a sweet way about him that made people fond of him. He was always full of stories about friends he had made. He cared deeply about his friends. When I called him last fall about the death of my father, he cried, and then wrote a lovely letter to my mother that made us cry in return.

Dennis was interested in just about everything. Here are just a few things that come to mind that fascinated him:
    Bicycles
    Ceramics
    Investing
    Welding
    Woodworking
    Gourmet cooking
    Microbiology
    Office politics
    Sculpture
    Blues music
    Fast cars
    Hot dogs
    Travelling
    and riding a unicycle

But the essence of Dennis was his enthusiasm for "Projects."

A project might be something as simple as a bookshelf. But Dennis would not be satisfied with a regular one. He would have plans for one fabricated from welded, grade 416, high Chromium Stainless steel, only available in 100 foot rolls to defense contractors. And he would eventually come up with some. After about 3 years of searching. And he would have gotten it for free and be on a first name basis with every stainless steel supplier in Chicago.

When Dennis found out that he had Leukemia, in some ways he treated it like another project. He learned about every aspect of his condition and was very involved in his care. He had almost weekly transfusions and special blood treatments, and he had to severely limit his activity.

His illness and inability to do all the things he wanted to do made him angry. But he was angry in a self-aware way. I was very impressed to see how he expressed his anger clearly and did not let it make him bitter or take it out on others. He constantly talked about the friends and the doctors in Chicago who nurtured him and helped him. He was in good hands.

There are exquisite moments when those whom we love surprise us and make us happy to be alive. Dennis provided many such moments for me. How can there ever be another friend like Dennis?

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