During his 91 years, Gerald Malone courted and married a member of an “all-girl orchestra,” raised 12 children and countless bees, and started an accounting business that served small businesses throughout the area.
Malone, who died Feb. 22, started Malone & Associates, an accounting firm in Wheat Ridge that thrived for more than 50 years handling the books for numerous businesses.
But Malone, the son of a trading post owner who grew up in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was as skilled in construction as he was in shuffling numbers.
He built much of the office building that his business occupied at 38th Avenue and Pierce Street in Wheat Ridge.
Then there was the house in which he and wife, Maggie, raised their children. “The house we grew up in at 37th and Pierce started out as a one bedroom shack even before Wadsworth (Boulevard) was paved,” said his daughter, Molly Malone, 51. “By the time we moved out, there were eight bedrooms, and then he divided it into a duplex.”
He used the skills he picked up in rural South Dakota throughout his life, said his brother Jim, 84, who was his partner in the accounting business
“All the Malones are do-it-yourselfers. When you live in the country, you do it yourself,” he said.
Malone, one of seven children, came to Denver to attend Regis Jesuit High School
While at a high school dance he met Margaret “Maggie” Salmon, the daughter of Benjamin Salmon, a conscientious objector whose resistance to the draft in World War I attracted national attention.
Malone went on to Regis College (now Regis University), where he studied accounting. After graduating in three years, he joined the Navy and served as an ensign.
Along with her sister, Elizabeth, Maggie, an accomplished bass player, joined the all-girl Joy Cayler Orchestra. The orchestra traveled with the USO, entertaining servicemen throughout the country and in the Pacific.
The two married, and he and his wife settled in Denver after the war. He went to work for an accounting firm before starting his own business in the early 1950s.
When their children were grown, Maggie, a gardner, got interested in bees. “Bees are so fascinating. They are delicate and hardworking,” Maggie, who died in 2001, told The Denver Post at the time.
Malone loved dancing and music and was able to brighten any conversation he engaged in, said his sister, Margaret. “He had that Irish sense of humor, a twinkle in his eye. He was a great tease.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or
