Ralph Elmer Dennis of Winchester, VA passed away on Friday, August 13, 2021, of natural causes, having lived a long and rich life well.

He was born in North Adams, MA on October 21, 1926, the son of Myrtle Smith Dennis and Elmer F. Dennis. He lived in Williamstown and graduated from Williamstown High School in 1944. Upon graduation, he served in the infantry during WWII and attained the rank of sergeant. After his discharge, he entered a four-year apprenticeship in drafting and design at General Electric. In 1950 he married Carolyn Crum, daughter of Bryon and Rose Crum, and during that marriage, they adopted a son Steven. Carolyn unexpectedly died in 1960.

Mr. Dennis left General Electric in 1953 and joined IBM in Poughkeepsie, NY as a mechanical designer. He had a successful career there and after assignments in Kingston, NY, Lexington, KY, Gaithersburg, MD, and Manassas, VA, he retired in 1987 as a program manager with over 33 years of service at IBM.

In 1961, he married Helene Weitlauf, daughter of Madeline, and Walter Weitlauf of Catskill, NY, and in 1962 his son, Phillip was born.

Ralph had several hobbies, including golfing and gardening, and was an active member of several service organizations. He was a talented singer with a fine tenor voice. Over his entire life, he sang in several choruses and church choirs, most recently at the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Winchester where he was also a cantor. While living in Williamstown he was a member of the Berkshire Choral Society, and while employed at IBM he sang in the IBM Male Chorus and the IBM Mixed Chorus. In addition, he was a member of the New Paltz Community Chorus. He

enjoyed serving others and the comradery of others, and was active for over 25 years in the Winchester Host Lion’s Club, as well as a member of the local Moose Lodge and Knights of Columbus.

He is survived by his wife of over 60 years, Helene, his son, Dr. Phillip Dennis of Ellicott City, his granddaughters Madeline and Ava Dennis of Ellicott City, and his niece Linda Dennis Brandon of Denton, TX.

He is predeceased by his sisters Lorna Brazee and Hazel Kaufman, his brother Hermon Albert Dennis, and his son Steven.

Visiting hours are at the Omps Amherst Chapel on Wednesday, August 18, 2021, from 6 pm to 8 pm where the Lion’s Club will have a brief ceremony followed by the recitation of Rosary. Fr. Bjorn Lundberg will officiate at a Funeral Mass at Sacred Heart Church on Thursday, August 19, 2021, at 11 am. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the American Heart Association, https://donatenow.heart.org.

The eulogy that was read at the Mass of Christian Burial for Mr. Ralph Dennis by his son Dr. Phillip Dennis

Thank you for joining us today to celebrate my father, Ralph Dennis.  I wanted to take this time to share some things about him that you may not know, but things that made him who he was and made him special to us.  The first thing is that although I knew him for almost 60 years, he had a full 35 years of life before I came along.

He was born on Oct. 21, 1926, three years before the stock market crash of 1929 that started the Great Depression. He grew up in Williamstown in mountainous western MA, with 3 siblings that were over 10 years older than he was.  As he liked to say, he was a “change of life” baby.  He was a good student, a good athlete, and a Boy Scout. He played semi-pro baseball and basketball (yes, he had a viciously accurate underhand free throw style). He sang solos at Williams College as a boy soprano and later as a teenage professional tenor, most notable selections from Handel’s Messiah such as Every Valley and Comfort Ye.

The time of WWII had a great impact on him, as his father died when he was 16, and his brother Hermon was captured at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 and eventually freed by the Russians.  My father couldn’t wait to enlist after finishing high school in 1944 and when the Navy didn’t have room for him, he enlisted in the Army.  Because his brother was imprisoned overseas, he was kept stateside, where he trained new recruits at Fort Bragg and other training sites along the East Coast.  He became a buck sergeant at 19, an accomplished featherweight boxer, and because of that was made a temporary MP and had a great story of returning a soldier to Fort Bragg after he had gone AWOL on the south side of Chicago after my dad traveled there solo with just a gun and a pair of handcuffs to get him.

His time in the Army was formative for him. He regretted not being able to fight overseas, and later regretted the fact that he lost much of his high-frequency hearing because they would fire live ammunition over the heads of new recruits who were crawling on their bellies under barbed wire to teach them to keep their heads down.

He never told me if some of them didn’t learn that lesson.

His other later regret was that the Army got him hooked on cigarettes that were included in his K rations. H later quit smoking when my data-driven father learned of the Surgeon General’s report in 1963 linking smoking to lung cancer.  Little did he know that his infant son would later focus his entire career on developing new therapies for lung cancer.

After the end of WWII, he began to make decisions that showed the values he exhibited to me decades later. Given an opportunity to go to college and pursue a dream to go to MIT and become an architect, he decided instead to support his mother after his father’s death and his mother’s stroke.  In the years after the war, he fell in love with his first wife, Carolyn, who had chronic health struggles. They suffered multiple miscarriages and the death of a premature baby girl, and after being told they could not have biological children, they adopted my brother, Steven. Ten years into their family life, Carolyn died suddenly. My father became a widowed, single father. A year later he met my mother at IBM, where they both worked. I arrived in 1962.

What have I observed about my dad and his life?

He lived values but didn’t preach.

He always took care of my mom, as well as her parents when they were old and sick. He took care of my dog when I was in medical school in NY, and would set an alarm at 3 am to take Andy out by lifting his hind legs because Andy could no longer walk and was incontinent otherwise. He loved being a grandfather and started saving for Maddy and Ava’s college education the moment they were born. He loved being a part of service organizations such as the Knights of Columbus and the Lion’s Club and cherished his friends there. He was unwavering in devotion, responsibility, and obligation.

He taught me many things.

He taught me to throw a curveball, even though we both knew I had no future as a pitcher.  In fact, I was so bad and he was so good as a dad, that when I was in high school he would come home from work in his Big Blue IBM suit, take off his jacket and pick up a glove.  We would go to our side lawn, and I would throw bad curveball after bad curveball, landing in the dirt, bouncing off his shins, the ball dancing into the woods behind our make-believe home plate. He would mutter as his shins got bruised and he traipsed through poison ivy to retrieve the ball, but he never turned down a chance to be a catcher for that curveball pitcher that would never be.

He taught me to fish because he loved the feeling of being outside near water and loved the thrill of catching a fish.

He loved the ocean.  He would go for long swims in the early morning on beach vacations, and some of his favorite memories as a young man were going deep sea fishing off the coast of Montauk and catching sharks.

He introduced me to classical music, not because it had social value or prestige but because it was part of our Western European heritage, had hidden beauty, and you had to listen to find it.

He showed me how his stamp collection inspired awe and introduced him to American history when he was a boy.

He showed me my first redwood tree and the majesty of the Grand Canyon.

He taught me when it was safe to plant tomatoes, and that the best way to eat peas is straight from the pod when they are sweet and crunchy.

He taught me the value of getting your hands dirty.

He taught me to be unafraid to try new things and be positive, as uncertainty was an opportunity for something good you can’t even imagine.

He taught me to be humble, that there is always something new to learn or master, and someone to learn from.

He taught me that education matters, as he lived the frustration of being passed over for promotions in mid-career because he did not have a college degree.

He taught me that practice is required for everything. It is the only way to excel at things, and if you aren’t perfect in your test scores or performance, there is room for improvement.

He taught me to love data and ask questions. He kept meticulous records of expenses, his vital signs, and attendance at the Lion’s Club meeting. His inquisitiveness was something we shared and a force that drove my undergraduate and graduate education and allowed me to thrive in a career developing new cancer therapies.

He respected life, especially those in service of the country, and never supported the use of military force without necessity because he lived the burdens of war.

He taught me that fewer words are a better way to end an argument.

He loved mystery books and spy novels and jigsaw puzzles and crossword puzzles. He knew the obscure 3 letter abbreviations that allowed him to complete puzzles when no one else did.

He was an avid sports fan. His favorite baseball player was Ted Williams and he saw him play in Boston several times in the 1940s. Dad loved Washington sports- he took me to Senators’ games as a boy and followed the Redskins, the Orioles when the Senators left, and finally the Nationals.  Our Father’s Day tradition was to attend a game of the Nats/Orioles series as a family, where he would pull for the Nats and I would pull for the Orioles, but we were really pulling for each other.

He loved music and singing and dance.  His obituary has his record of choir memberships, but he had a BIG voice that was willingly shared whenever there was an opportunity to sing.  He had the kind of BIG voice that was embarrassing to me as a teenage boy.  “Dad, why do you sing you so loud?”  But it was a beautiful noise and one that lit churches with heavenly sound.  He also loved to dance.  My parents had at least one weekly date- to go to the Springfield Hilton every Sunday night to see the Buck Creek Jazz Band and hear Dixieland Jazz.  They did this until their early 80’s. This was a great opportunity for my parents to see close friends, have a couple of drinks, and let it all hang out on the dance floor.  In fact, as I was thinking about this eulogy, I think my father might’ve been an important early contributor to the concept of “dad moves”.  I went with them a few times to hear this great jazz band, but I was utterly embarrassed by my dad’s bizarre choreiform movements on the dance floor.  I had to look away.  Little did I know that decades later I would use his inspiration to find my own “Dad” moves to embarrass my daughters.

My father was the ultimate family man. The family came first. He attended virtually all of my games and concerts from travel football and basketball to Robinson High School to U.Va Glee Club performances to professional singing gigs at Carnegie Hall. He loved Maddy and Ava, took great pride in their accomplishments, and attended as many of their games and performances as possible. But he loved my mother most of all.

They were inseparable. One of my favorite anecdotes from my parent’s marriage is from one of his recent hospitalizations.  As the hospital day ended and my mother and I stood to leave and say good night over his hospital bed, my mother looked down at my dad lying there and said, “I’m so tired I wish I could just crawl in next to you”.  Without missing a beat my father responded wearily, “Oh Helene, I wouldn’t be much fun tonight”.

Their affection was legendary and endless.

As my father approached the end of his life, his losses became physical. He injured both rotator cuffs, lost the use of his shoulders, and couldn’t raise his arms above his head to put on a shirt or play golf.  He became wheelchair-bound as his spinal stenosis progressed.  His kidneys failed and he was dependent upon nightly dialysis. He could no longer swallow solid foods or speak clearly. In spite of this, he never complained. Ever.  He did his exercises, tolerated different types of therapy, and maintained a positive attitude until the very end.

I sometimes thought of the book of Job as he went through the last stages of his life. Like Job, with every physical loss, his faith was steadfast.  The other journey I thought of is Jesus’ passion, where Jesus accepted the inevitability of a solitary death while witnessing the abandonment of those closest to him. However, my dad’s journey was not one of abandonment, but one with great support from devoted medical staff including his internist, Dr. William Brink, his caregivers, and his family. Simply, his body betrayed him, not his friends, as evidenced by your presence here.

My father’s almost century of living had a tremendous impact in a quiet way, without external recognition. I have no doubt that Dad is with Jesus, who is celebrating this humble but important man’s life, and probably remarking- like the former choir director of Sacred Heart did- that the Heavenly Choir now has a great new tenor.