Everything was always “hunky-dory” with Ron Aguilar.
It was a phrase he said all his life. He named his T-shirt company Hunky Dory and wore shirts and sweat shirts with the phrase on them.
Aguilar was 65 when he died at his Centennial home of colon cancer on Oct. 7.
“He was always positive, motivated and optimistic,” said his stepdaughter, Layne DeLucio of Aurora.
“He was fun and had a good spirit and good heart,” said a friend, Jacque Montgomery of Centennial.
Aguilar’s shop is at East Alameda Avenue and South Havana Street, but he at one time also had stores in the Aurora Mall and Cinderella City shopping center.
Determined to keep active, he went to the store just a week before he died.
The shop, which the family continues to operate, prints T-shirts as well as aprons, sweat pants, bags, shorts and hats.
He did shirts and other apparel for high schools, businesses, clubs, police departments, fire departments and the more than 200 girls in his daughter’s high school graduating class.
He never had to advertise, said DeLucio, because his reputation for good products spread by word of mouth.
He had a turquoise Volks wagen van painted with flowers and the words Hunky Dory on it. Aguilar loved to surf and permanently attached a surf board on the roof of the van.
Aguilar, who lived 18 months longer than doctors estimated he would, had a “bucket list” of things to do before he died, as in the movie by the same name. Among the things he accomplished were renewing his wedding vows with his wife, Marianne, going to Hawaii and the wine country in California, taking a cruise off the Mexican coast and buying a Jaguar, DeLucio said.
He didn’t have “Hunky Dory” printed on the Jaguar, but the license plate reads “BKTLST.”
He wanted to ride in an F-16 fighter plane but was too ill to accomplish that.
He was buried in a Hawaiian shirt, one of about 100 in his collection.
Ron Aguilar was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 4, 1942. He earned a bachelor’s in art and a master’s degree in graphic design.
He moved with friends to Denver in the 1970s because of the skiing in Colorado.
He married Marianne DeLucio on April 1, 1990.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
