Worship by Numbers

Meet my dad…

The Rev. William Richard Denton

July 17, 1929 – July 30, 1986

Father, Minister, Librarian, Bell Collector

This was my dad about 50 years ago!

On the occasion of graduation…
from Whitworth College or San Francisco Theological Seminary.

I put this picture up for my Facebook profile this weekend in honor of Father’s Day.

This is Mom. Dad met her at seminary, where he was studying Christian Education. She was studying Music.

They married on May 17, 1953.

My father gave up being a minister to become a librarian, and he liked that a lot better. Though, he kept his license current so he could continue to perform weddings and funerals.

He acquired a Masters Degree in Library Science from USC, while he worked as a librarian at Southern California School of Theology Library at Claremont.

So what was my dad like?

He loved books and bells!

He collected books, bells and books about bells.

He put a hundred or so bells out on a table in our front yard on the 4th of July every year. And at 10 AM, the whole neighborhood, and the local news reporters, would all come over and ring bells for five minutes.

It was a big thing.

My dad had a broken piece (about 2/3) of the headpiece from a Russian sleigh team. I always rang those sleigh bells on the 4th of July. That was my favorite bell!

Dad always rang the big school bell. It was the same one Mom rang to call us kids home when we were out playing.

Dad gave talks about bells in schools and churches. His favorite bell was the Liberty Bell.

He had a pair of table lamps with Liberty Bells as bases. We hadn’t had them very long when one of them fell on my head and broke into a dozen pieces. My mom glued it back together, and he went right on taking it to his bell talks.

The liberty bell is supposed to be cracked anyway, right?

For many years he was corresponding secretary of the American Bell Association. We spent many, many nights talking about what they served at their meetings. Dad loved sweets, and told me every gooey detail about the food they had at the bell club.

I sometimes even got to go!

I forgot my dad was a biker!

In the last decade of his life, he took up motorcycling, but never got to own his own bike. He satisfied himself with riding along on others’ wheels, participating in many bike runs. When I took up motorcycling in 2008, and bought my first bike, I had completely forgotton that he was a biker.

He also had a nice local gig going as Santa Claus! He liked being Santa Claus for local schools and churches. And he really liked being the Santa Claus in the side car in the Annual Christmas Toy Run of the Modified Motorcycle Association of America in Los Angeles.

So, maybe motorcycles are just in my blood…

After my Biker-Santa-Dad grew a beard, he was sometimes mistaken for Willie Nelson. I bet you didn’t see THAT coming from looking at that wholesome looking seminary student at the top of this post… He even wore a bandana-wrapped braid in his beard!

Here’s a picture of Willie Nelson that actually looks quite a bit like my dad…

Take away the guitar and the gap between Willie’s front teeth (which you can’t see anyway). And make the beard longer and more wirey, and that’s my dad.

I wish I could put my hands on a picture of Willie-Nelson-lookalike Dad…

I won tickets for a MEN AT WORK concert, when my father happened to be in Olympia for his father’s funeral. As luck would have it, he was arriving home on the train just a few hours before my concert, and I was supposed to pick him up at the train station downtown.

When I told him I won the tickets, he asked if I would take him to the concert, and if we could dress alike (like bikers) in jeans and black t-shirts and leather jackets…

I’ll always remember the night I picked my dad up at the train station and took him to the Men at Work concert, in our biker gear!

We had a blast!

My dad liked to help people

He had an amazing capacity for unconditional love and selfless generosity.

He was a chaplain at a halfway house associated with Atascadero State Mental Hospital for Sex Offenders. Occasionally he would bring home one of his charges to help him relocate in Southern California.

After he died, we got a small taste of the kinds of things he did for others. For an entire year, we answered more than a dozen phone calls every month, from people who hadn’t heard from him, or had missed their annual birthday letter.

He must have written hundreds of these letters on an annual basis!

I knew he wrote them, he had shown them to me more than once. I just didn’t realize that the two or three I thought he had going all the time were really a dozen or more.

As we informed these dear people that he had died, they told us how they had met him and what he had done for them.

My dad was the kind of guy who would give his last meal to a stranger. He would forgive any injury or humiliation. And keep loving. And keep giving.

When I was away at college, he sent me a care package every Thursday, which I received every Monday. And every one of those care packages contained a Garfield comic strip (and a variety of other comics and clippings), something from Mom, a book, and some food.

He was the kind of person who would drive back to the store to get the penny that was missing from his change, or to give back the $10 dollar bill that was mixed in with his ones by mistake.

He was hardworking and frugal.

And sometimes a little bit contrary. On “green goody day” at work he would take something orange, because his ancestors were followers of William of Orange, not St. Patrick! Eveyone has their limits, I guess.

I never cared about William or Patrick, I just wore green so I wouldn’t get pinched!

Here’s how I like to remember my father…

Dad was the Aquisitions Librarian of Periodicals at the Southern California School of Theology Library at Claremont for over 25 years. For his 25th anniversary, he was awared a silver platter. They invited my mom to be there, and I joined them too. For Dad, it was a surprise.

In those days, Saturday mornings were our special times, when Dad and I would sit and talk, usually eating coffee cake. Dad loved to bake coffee cake (and banana bread). It was our favorite! And he baked it nearly every Saturday morning.

On the Saturday morning after his anniversary party, he brought me my coffee cake in bed, beaming, and said to me: I have never been able to give you silver spoons, but today I brought you breakfast in bed on a sliver platter.

Within a year or so, he went on a nationwide tour with his bells, starting around mid June, 1986. He came home with pneumonia on July 16, drove himself straight to the ER, and died two weeks later.

I hope you enjoyed my tribute, as much as I enjoyed remembering it all…

Have a wonderful Father’s Day!!

May God grant you a heart of wisdom!

Worship by Numbers
Ramona Denton

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
~Jim Valvano