After being a deputy sheriff and a drugstore owner, Don Dilley found his niche at the Denver Public Library, in the Western history department.
Dilley died Feb. 28 at the Hospice of St. John, where he had been a volunteer. He was 82.
A service is planned for 3 p.m. Saturday at the Center for Spiritual Living, 1420 Ogden St. The service will be held in a room adjacent to the Don Dilley Memorial Library, which he spent years creating.
Dilley’s life turned around 28 years ago, when he gave up alcohol.
He took courses in philosophy and became a spiritual practitioner in the Church of Religious Science, was a mentor to an estimated 100 recovering alcoholics and volunteered countless hours taking care of people with AIDS. Sometimes he “would actually move in with a person to take care of them,” said longtime friend J.D. West.
“He had an empathy that was uncommon,” said Jim Chandler, pastor emeritus of Center for Spiritual Living. “He was dedicated to people’s recovery.”
Dilley was among the founding members of the church, Chandler said.
Dilley began with caretaking in the 1980s, “when so many were dying of AIDS,” West said. “He stepped up when others were stepping away” from people with AIDS.
Dilley maintained friendships for years, said his son, Neal Ashmun of Nashville, Tenn., often through e-mails.
“He was one of the first people to have a private computer, in 1979,” Ashmun said.
Dilley “was a wonderful guy with a mellow personality,” said Mary Daze of Denver, clerical supervisor in the Western history department. “Even after he retired, we called on him. He loved history and had a good memory.”
At age 76, Dilley enrolled in Metropolitan State College of Denver to study philosophy, and he made a four-year study on the philosophy of Science of Mind.
At 80, he wrote an autobiography, chronicling his family life during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Donald L. Dilley was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on Christmas Day, 1927. His family moved to Colorado when he was a toddler. He went to a one-room school in Kersey and then entered the U.S. Navy.
He studied at George Washington University, earning a degree in library science, said his son.
He married Jeanette Dorsay in 1951. They divorced in 1960.
During their marriage, Dilley was a deputy sheriff in Kersey and briefly owned a drugstore and a travel agency. He was a disc jockey for eight years on KYOU.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
