Dean Grenz was born in Napoleon, North Dakota in 1945 to Gideon and Gloria Grenz. When he was still in grade school his parents moved him and his siblings Dawne, Merle, and Marji to Missoula, Montana. He often shared a favorite story of his from his youth in Missoula, about a time that he and Merle ran down Mount Sentinel to get their dad, then hurried back up the mountain in time to witness together the wonder of standing above the fog and seeing a cloud-filled valley with a time-traveler’s sense of what Lake Missoula must have looked like 15,000 years ago.
It may have been that moment that put him on a lifelong path of exploration, evolving from a North Dakota farm boy into a quintessential Montana mountain man; skiing in the winter, mushrooming in the spring, panning gold in the summer, and bugling elk in the fall.
After graduating from Missoula County High School in the mid 1960s, Dean attended one year of school at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota before returning to Missoula and completing his bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Montana. After a stint of being a student teacher, he took a teaching position at the Boulder River School and Hospital, living first in Boulder, then Basin, and back to Boulder. The Victorian-era house in Boulder, with the large yard and old barn, would become his workshop, urban farm, and home base for adventures around the world for more than five decades.
He lived out his lifelong passions in a legacy of teaching, woodworking, writing, drawing, gardening, outdoor adventuring, playing piano, attending fellowship and political activism.
Whether it was with his siblings growing up in Napoleon, and later Missoula, or with his wife and own family of five children and their friends in Basin and Boulder, Dean sought a sense of wonder and the opportunities to share it with those around him. He led more adventures and misadventures into the mountains of Western Montana than people can fully recall. The magic of being on an outing with Dean was that whether it was sunny and easy going, or whether everyone was cold, wet, exhausted, hungry, dirty, and potentially lost – when all was said and done, many of the adventurers would look back on it fondly and look forward to the next time out. In this way he inspired a whole generation of adventurers who in turn continue the legacy of seeking out the wild corners of the map, in all weathers and all seasons.
It was usually in a moment outdoors, with friends or family, when Dean would look out at the landscape and at his companions and make a predictable declaration: “We’re rich.”
He didn’t mean money, or property of any sort. And it was not anything that was even his to own. It was the moment, the appreciation of being, the peace of presence in the tumultuous journey from miraculous origin to unknowable destination. The riches around him were not anything that could be kept by one person, but rather something that became riches only through sharing.
Perhaps most memorable about Dean “Grenz For Peace” was his immense idealism that led him to engage nearly everyone he met in conversations — often ending in rhetorical stalemates — about the state of the political world and how we need to achieve peace on Earth simply to simply resolve our differences peacefully. He was known to often imagine scenes where instead of raising armies and waging war, world leaders would shape history by playing chess or arm wrestling. Much to his chagrin, three of his five children went on to join the armed forces, where they reported back to him the apparent applied limits of peaceful idealism.
For eighty orbits around the sun, Dean lived his daily adventure, both inviting and challenging others to join in. While he was a complex and dogged man of opaque depths, he lived in a way that he felt it was “good to be alive” every day – being kind to others; being thankful for the bounty of life’s garden; and being uncompromising in his sense of right, justice, and peace.
He spent the last several years of his life experiencing setbacks in his physical health, yet he traveled, shared adventures with loved ones, wrote expansive volumes of autobiography, sent many dozens of letters to the editor, won grand prizes for his amazing garden vegetables, and lived life to his fullest. Before he passed away at home in Boulder, he took in rounds and rounds of visiting family and friends, phone calls, and video chats, finding moments for joy and sharing a story and laughter.
Dean was preceded in death by his father and mother. Those still on the journey and carrying his memory include his wife of 43 years, Connie Grenz; his three siblings, Dawne Schmautz, Merle Grenz and Marji Scott; his five children, Julia Graham with her husband Jason Graham, Chris Grenz with his wife Marci Grenz, Josh Grenzsund with his wife Evangelina Sundgrenz, Michael Grenz with his wife Sharon Grenz, and Daryl Grenz his wife Lily Jiangsong Gong; and Dean’s 15 grandchildren.
Friends and family are invited to a memorial to be held at 1 p.m. on April 1 at the Catholic Event Center, 214 South Elder, Boulder.
