Presentation by Dr. Bob Hart

June 10, 2000, Stockton, California Holy Cross Methodist Church

Thank you for this opportunity. I see many of the friends and family of Dennis….many who loved him as I did. It's an honor to be asked to be the professional one to speak, for he had so many professional friends who loved and admired him.

I can't help but look over and over again at his picture here with the whimsical smile and think about how he was such a good natured fellow. He led not by force of his personality but by his conviction, his deep well of common sense, and by his love for his friends, patients, and colleagues, and therefore was a leader who went largely unrecognized. Even over the many years he and I were associated, I didn't stop to think about it until asked to make this talk, how very much he had affected me and I didn't even know it.

Dennis hired me 17 years ago this month at San Joaquin County Mental Health. He had a calm, pleasant and friendly style about him. I thought the job offered a mental health system that was working, one that could be friendly, be compassionate, and most of all, that it might reflect his personality. Seventeen years ago, and I'm still working there.

Another area of focus was the new mental health center facility, which you have read about in the bulletin insert. Dennis spearheaded the design of that facility. I have lived in that facility every day except weekends for all these years, and Dennis' personality seems to be everywhere. It reflects a decency toward people, it reflects the idea from his leadership in community mental health as treating those who suffer as more with us rather than apart from us, it makes the relationships in medical care more human, more workable. This, I think, is a legacy of Dennis, …my leader, more than anyone I know.

Dennis had many professional honors, which I will not enumerate. But I will mention that I was always impressed that Dennis was a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. I would see him in the halls at the Annual Conventions, his medal dangling around his neck. We would stop and talk until he'd say he had a little function to go to, and then he'd go meet with the cream of the crop of American Psychiatry. And he was one of them.

Finally, we had a partnership at Quail Point Center for the last 15 years. There were many problems to solve as medicine moved through many changes, from fee-for-service to managed care to mangled care. All through this, through the many changes that were baffling to me and to my colleagues, I could always count on Dennis to be calm, sensible, thoughtful, human, and helpful, with his usual style of professionalism. He was again, my leader, as a professional, as a psychiatrist, as a physician, and as a human being.

So, despite the fact that his life should have gone on for another 30 years - for all the marvelous things he was doing, there is so much to celebrate. I'm thankful we can all be together to do that. I say, thank God for Dennis Rupel!!