Danny Graul -August 17, 1950 – October 23, 2020 – Singing His Spirit Home

September, 1979, Nancy and Danny. Adams County Blue Grass Festival. Molly, all of 2 years of age was there too somewhere.

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Westward Portrait of Danny G.

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Everyone should have a friend like Danny Graul.

He made it to seventy on his birthday, August 17 and then two months more. He had wanted to do that. He also asked to see our grandson, Teddy and one day just before he slid into unconsciousness I managed to bring Teddy by – a 17 month old little boy trying to figure out what he was looking at but Teddy responded when Danny said “Hi Teddy” and then “thanks Rob” to me. The beginning and the end of life…

At 10:48 this morning the hospice nurse Blanche stopped the oxygen to Danny’s system. He was still breathing with difficulty, gasping for air. Both of his sisters, Eileen and Sherry were present along with brother-in-law Roger. His housemate, Jennifer Norton, whose care and affection had extended Danny’s life for who knows how long was present too, along with Nancy who stopped by briefly and me. Another life-long friend, Becker, was nearby, concerned about COVID-19, but there in spirit.

As the oxygen tube was removed from his nose Miles Davis’s music was playing in the background with Davis’s biography on the shelf nearby. As family and friends grew in the apartment where Danny lay dying, I figured it was time to say good bye to Danny, kiss his forehead one last time, whisper that we love him and make my exit.  Too many people were accumulating in the room  in these COVID-19 days. Besides, when people begin talking all this nonsense of his “going on to meet his maker”, “God will take care of him” my stomach starts to churn, I feel like I’m suffocating and before I say what’s on my mind, … time to leave, which I did.

That he lasted as long as he did with all that put into his body and the ways he abused it for most of his life is a testament to his strong constitution. A first class juvenile delinquent, drug addict in his youth, his addictive personality remained a part of his being his whole life. He never really shook it but the focused changed from drugs to sports, jazz and more than anything else movies. Much healthier. If there were an olympic medal for movie going, Danny and his companero of decades, Becker, would be right up there for the gold medal. He’d see a film and – if it had some political impact – would just about insist that I go see with him and that we talk about it afterwards.

And he owned a used book store, Black and Red up in Arvada around 80th and Wadsworth, a successful one.

Well it was more than a used book store as it sold videos, records, cd’s as well as fancy games the names of which I can’t remember and never cared to join in with.. Occasionally he’d buy up rather special collections and thinking because I read a lot I could help him price them… which of course I couldn’t. It’s one thing to read a lot and quite another to know the business of books, of which I was, and remain mostly ignorant. But like the movie going, it was his way of involving me, of not letting our friendship die. In the end I think we both knew what it was about… just maintaining our friendship.

Black and Red was a successful used bookstore in an era where used book stores were dying on the vine, and Danny was a big reason for its success, his personal touch, his warmth, his virtual universal empathy for anyone down and out and despite growing up in a family well endowed financially and himself materially well off, if not spoiled, he never lost his sympathy for the working class and the poor; he deeply hated racism, homophobia, sexism in all its forms – although he ran into all three regularly. Of course being one of the most disorganized people I have ever come across it’s hard to believe that he ran a successful business – but he did, thanks competent store managers who kept the place in order. But he was key to its success.

Danny had so many insecurities… and once a person got to know him it was pretty clear that he was most of his life “an easy touch.” The number of people who milked him for money, drugs and other favors – who took advantage of his good nature – are well known, if not legendary. It took him most of his life to understand that hard lesson: one doesn’t buy friendship, even if one craves it.

There is one woman whom on his behalf I would like to personally strangle for the way she systematically ripped him off big time… we all know who she is – and she knows we know. But then, I’m a pacifist and I can’t even go kneecap her. There’s the fact that it was his struggle, not mine and even those of us who were his good friends knew – and told him repeatedly – that we couldn’t fight his battles for him, only give him advice that he agreed with but never took because it hurt too much. That said, it was his insecurities and his sense of honesty about them, the way he could let them all hang out, discuss them – that drew me to him for the 47 or 48 years of our friendship, a man whose mother once told him that she cursed the day he was born – something that wounded him deeply his whole life. I knew that I had most of the same insecurities Danny expressed, perhaps a little more manageable, but really not much. He wasn’t just “my friend” but our friend – Nancy cared for Danny, loved him as much as I do.

Jack Galvin, Scottie Keating, Joe Grindon, now Danny Graul – a Jewish kid’s “recovering” Catholic friends! How I loved each of them. How fortunate I have been to have had them in my life.