Former writer for the Herald remembered
Paul Denison died in Sweden at the age of 77
MONTEREY >> Paul Denison’s children remember their father as a kind and thoughtful man who taught them about courage, reinvention and making the most of life and the opportunities it affords.
Mr. Denison was a former Herald reporter and editor in the 1970s and 1980s. He was born in Brocton, New York on St. Patrick’s Day in 1943 and died in Solna, Sweden on Dec. 8, 2020, at the age of 77.
Both his daughter Naomi Tilley and son Aran Denison navigated this past holiday season without their father but were fortunate to have visited him once more in early November for about two weeks.
“My brother and I got on a plane with a letter in hand from his doctor and they let us in,” said Tilley.
Mr. Denison had been living in the Scandinavian country for the past 15 years with his second wife Monica Thelestam, a woman he had met in Israel many years before. He
had been preceded in death by his first wife of nearly 35 years, Judy, who died in 2002.
In a piece Mr. Denison wrote for the Eugene Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon, where he last worked before taking early retirement in 2005, he described the period after his wife’s passing.
“One year after my wife died — and a week or two after a brief but scary health crisis of my own — I stood one autumn evening on the footbridge at Valley River Center, looking down at a dead salmon in the shallows, thinking that my life, too, might end soon. And not really caring. …
Then something happened that surprised me and everyone close to me. Blame Google. One day in July 2004, I typed in the name of a woman I had met in Israel in 1964. We had dug potatoes on one kibbutz, gone on a student bus tour of the country and picked apples at a second kibbutz. We were inseparable friends.
“But by summer’s end, we did separate. We corresponded off and on for two years, but we both got married and lost track of each other. But I remembered her married name, and when I Googled, there she was, just like that, after 40 years.”
A month after retiring, Mr. Denison moved to Sweden to be with his soon-tobe second wife, and the two were married in 2006.
“Friends have asked me if I’m apprehensive about retiring, moving to another country, getting married, learning a new language. Mildly so, perhaps. But I’m far more afraid of what would happen if I ignored my deepest feelings and stayed in my shrinking comfort zone,” Mr. Denison said in his final column with the Register-Guard. “Going forward without Monica has become unthinkable.”
Tilley said that her father “was such a kind and thoughtful man. He’s truly the one person I know whose thoughts, words and actions were completely aligned. He had so much integrity and was such a principled person.”
Mr. Denison was first introduced to the Monterey Bay area by the Army when he was stationed at Fort Ord in 1965, after completing basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and attended the Defense Language Institute on the Monterey Peninsula.
According to Tilley, her father became a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He was held in the stockade at Fort Ord and visited by his future wife Judy as much as possible. The two had met through friends in Carmel.
“He proposed to mother with a ring from a gumball machine,” said Tilley. “He got out and was honorably discharged.”
Paul and Judy were married in September 1967, with famed folk-singer Joan Baez singing at their wedding. They had met Baez through her Institute for the Study of Nonviolence that she started when she lived in Carmel Valley.
After they wed, the two moved back to Columbus, Ohio so Mr. Denison could finish his Bachelor of Arts in Journalism which had been interrupted by a draft notice, at Ohio State University, class of 1969.
Mr. Denison worked for the Youngstown Vindicator in Ohio, the Sharon Herald in Pennsylvania, and the Christian Science Monitor in Boston before working at the Herald in Monterey from 1970 to 1983 and then the Eugene paper from 1984 until 2005 where he was a features reporter, editor and department head.
Former Monterey Herald reporter Kevin Howe worked with Mr. Denison when the Herald plant was located in downtown Monterey where part of Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey now sits.
“He was the most principled person I ever met, a real standup guy,” said Howe.
He remembered once when the managing editor of the newspaper at the time came back after conferencing with the police chief and had commented that “we could be a resource,” to which Mr. Denison replied, “we are not the police force, we’re not going to do this.”
Lewis Leader, a former Herald editor, was also a coworker of Mr. Denison’s during that time.
“He was a kind, gentle and caring soul, both in regards
to his coworkers and his stories,” said Leader. “He was thoughtful and soft-spoken and a very fine reporter.”
Leader said that Mr. Denison’s greatest attribute was that he understood people. He described Denison’s writing as “very thoughtful” and said he was not the kind of reporter “who went for the jugular. He had a true empathy for people.”
A memory of Mr. Denison that Leader will always carry with him was how “he went out of his way to befriend a young, single who didn’t know anybody. He helped me transition from Berkeley” where Leader had moved from.
Former Herald copy desk editor, Richard Wilson remembers Mr. Denison as being conscientious, with high standards, very wellread and a person you could talk about literature with.
“He was a wonderful writer with a beautiful style … a very correct and elegant fashion,” said Wilson. “He had an elegant turn of phrase.”
Wilson also characterized Mr. Denison as someone who could do anything, from city editor and news editor to a reporter and was a “jack-of-all-trades” in the newsroom.
Mr. Denison’s son, Ari, said that the past holidays were rough with many little reminders that his dad was not around and things just not being the same.
“He was my best friend. I think at a certain point in my life, he let me be who I was without wanting me to turn away from myself,” said Denison. “He gave me the freedom to be who I was and gave me the knowledge to do that with my own kids.”
The son considers that a “giant gift” that his father left him and considers the greatest lesson he learned from his dad was “to respect people.”
Both of Mr. Denison’s children said that one of the biggest things they’ll remember about their dad was his sense of humor and a childhood filled with laughter.
Tilley said that her brother commented just the other day that he thought their father “was a comedian with a Ph.D. and a master of puns.”
According to Tilley, her father passed away peacefully with his wife and step-daughter by his side in his adopted homeland of Sweden.
He is survived by his wife, Monica, his children Naomi and her husband Matthew, his son Aran and his wife Elizabeth, stepdaughter Jarinja and her husband Magnus, and four granddaughters, along with nieces, nephews and their families.
Mr. Denison’s family plans to spread his ashes off the Oregon coast in a private ceremony sometime in the future.
“For all of you who knew and loved him, you know his gentle presence, kind spirit, quiet wit and loving nature will be missed,” said Tilley. “We trust that our mother Judy, his best friend Bernt Al Hansen, and all those who preceded him were there to welcome him on the other side.”
She added that she believes her father’s last published column serves as a reminder that love, the only thing we take with us when we leave, never dies.