DENNIS THE WIZARD
This is sad tidings. When I returned from the Serengeti, I learned that on Friday, June 22, Dennis Turner, my friend of over 40 years and author of TTP's Dennis The Wizard column, passed away.
Dennis had been in horrible pain and suffering for so long that his passing was likely a blessing. He never mentioned it in his columns, and how he wrote them in spite of it was heroic.
Some years ago, he contracted an infection in his spine which caused a progressive deterioration of his spinal nerves. He lost the use of his legs, and then all the functions of his digestive system.
Few of us can even imagine what it is to try and continue living like that. Yet Dennis did. He persevered, maintaining a wide range of interests and a dense network of friends. He never lost his intense intellectual curiosity and passion for life.
His was a mind apart. I knew that very quickly after first meeting him at the Reagan for Governor campaign headquarters on Wilshire Blvd. in downtown LA in January 1966. I had just graduated from UCLA and had been made State Chairman of Youth for Reagan. He had just graduated as a Bruin himself, but our paths never crossed on campus. It was Ronald Reagan who brought us together.
He was a six-foot-two, 280-pound Mongolian Jew with an IQ of 180. Anyone who thought he was a fat guy to be pushed around made a dangerous mistake, for not only did he have a second-degree black belt in karate, he had unbelievably fast hands and feet. His kicks were blindingly quick, so powerful they could take someone's head off.
His family's original name was Subotai from Birobidzhan, the "Jewish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic" where Stalin shipped Jews off to Siberia in the 20s, as the Czars had before him. That's where his great-grandmother's family was sent, and where she married a Buriat Mongol.
A number of their children were able to move to Baku in Czarist Azerbaijan. A daughter met a nice Jewish boy there named Cherchinsky, and got out during the Russian Revolution, emigrating to America. At Ellis Island, the immigration officer decided spelling Cherchinsky was a pain, and wrote the name "Turner" on the form. That's how their son, and thus Dennis, got such a non-Jewish name.
Growing up in Southern California, Dennis was so bright it was hard for him to relate to a lot of the other kids. So he buried himself in science and math. And just as it was physically dangerous to get in a fight with him, it was mentally dangerous to get into an argument with him as well.
I have never known anyone in my life so mentally quick and blazingly articulate as Dennis. He could verbally take someone down and tie them in mental knots faster than a rodeo champion can rope and tie down a calf. It was so much fun to watch – because he loved to do it with liberals.
His contempt for liberals, for their hypocrisy and intellectual cowardice, was bottomless. "I hate liberals," he once told me. "I hate ‘em worse'n Communists." At least Commies and Marxists were intellectually honest and consistent. Liberals were just so much intellectual mush. Any liberal who started spouting PC tripe to Dennis was in for a very traumatic experience.
Yet Dennis could also see the humor in everything as well. He had this weird off-the-wall sense of humor that was excruciatingly hilarious. Once he got going you were in danger of passing out from laughing so hard.
It was Dennis who introduced me to Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. Reading her Atlas Shrugged and his Human Action at Dennis' insistence was an intellectual awakening for me. I had always wanted an irrefutable moral defense of capitalism, and a total obliteration of the logic and practicability of any variant or Marxism, and Rand and Mises provided it respectively.
So you can see how back in 1966 we became life-long friends.
After the Reagan campaign, I moved to Hawaii and Dennis moved to New York where he joined a commodity trading company. Through the computer trading programs he developed he became successful, married a nice Swedish girl, and moved into a McMansion in Summit, New Jersey.
Then he and Ava went to visit Israel. The experience changed his life. The pull of his Jewish roots was so strong that he decided to emigrate. That was in the early 80s. Ava gave it a go, then moved back to Sweden. Dennis built a new life for himself, with new friends and a new purpose – supporting the survival of Israel – but he never remarried or even had another serious relationship. The love of his life was gone.
Then he contracted his spinal infection. That was ten years ago. It was a slow descent into hell.
When I launched To The Point in March of 2003, Dennis offered to write a column on computer security and technology which we both thought would bring additional value to our subscribers. He continued to contribute to To The Point as his condition worsened.
To call what he endured a never-ending nightmare is a such a pale understatement. It took impossible courage to endure the collapse of the entire digestive system, the awful pain and continual drugs with their ghastly side effects. Still, he persevered. I'll be honest. I couldn't do it. I don't know how he did.
As readers of his column noticed, he had to stop almost six months ago. His last was on February 23. He fought for life until he could not fight any more.
So he is gone. As someday we all shall be. All I can do is hold him dear in memory. I always will.