Dennis was born on May 28, 1948, the son of Norman H. Gaarder and Olive Motland. He grew up at Osage, Mitchell county, Iowa and as a young man attended North Iowa Area Community College, studying drafting. In 1968 he was hired as a draftsman by Bell Telephone Laboratories of Naperville, Illinois.
Denny was very outgoing, and loved to play sports, like football, softball, volleyball, snow skiing, and golf; and also loved to go to parties.
His first car was a old Plymouth, and about 1970 he bought a bright yellow
Baracuda, and later a green Ford. He washed his cars "once a year," on the grass in the back yard, with an SOS pad in one hand and a beer in the other -- figuratively speaking. In 1969 he and several friends took the old Plymouth to Virginia Beach to get it painted over the Memorial Day weekend. They really wanted to just party and play on the beach, but most of the time was spent drinking beer and sanding down the old paint to get it ready to paint.
Denny on a ski trip about 1973
Larger VersionFrom 1968 until 1972 Denny lived at 5501 S. Main Street, on the corner of Main and 55th Streets in Downers Grove, Illinois, in an old but sturdy two-story frame house.
In the summer of 1968, Dennis was living in a house in Weston, Illinois, when the entire town was condemned in order to make way for the Fermi Lab, a nuclear accellerator laboratory.
Eventually his drinking became too much, he lost his job at Bell Labs; and on November 12, 1981 he died at his home in Illinois, near West Chicago. He was buried in the city cemetery in Osage.
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