Dale Eckberg, a lifelong outdoor enthusiast who loved biking through his adopted home of Aurora and scaling an assortment of 14,000-foot peaks in his beloved Colorado, died July 10 at his home after an accidental fall.
Dale was a retired Xcel career employee who was personally devoted to the energy company’s mission – delivering good energy – and steadfast in that devotion from the first day he was hired as a meter reader through to his retirement in 2015 as a residential energy consumption analyst. He was 72 at the time of his passing.
He came to Colorado from Akron, Ohio, in the early 1970s with a simple goal: be hired as a meter reader. After applying for that job, even though there were no openings and it was a highly competitive position, Dale would return to the hiring office every Monday morning at 8 a.m. as if reporting for work.
When told that he would be contacted, should an opening occur, Dale likely nodded in the affirmative, offered up his trademark wide smile and left. But he would show up every Monday morning thereafter with a simple question: any openings today?
Rinse and repeat, week after week, for several months in a row until finally, probably because Xcel staffers wanted him to stop showing up in their office, he got the job. “I knew they would eventually hire me as long as I kept showing up on Monday mornings,” Dale once told his brother, John.
There was no quit in Dale Eckberg. But there was plenty of ambition and achievement.
He had bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business from Akron University, was an avid follower of the stock market, caretaker to a sweet cat named Roxy and loved golf and playing on an Xcel Energy softball team.
While Dale loved the Colorado Rockies, purchased a commemorative brick at Coors Field in the Eckberg family name and attended dozens of games each year, his heart remained with the Cleveland Indians – now the Guardians. Dale was cremated with a Rockies purple and black baseball hat and an Indians’ World Series hat from 1990, a game he and his brothers attended.
Dale is survived by John, sister-in-law Carol, of Bloomington, IN; nephew Matthew Eckberg, of Madison, Wisc., married to Nancy; and niece Rachel (nee Eckberg) Castella, married to Tomas Castella, of Alexandria, Va.; grandnephews Alden Eckberg and Sebastian Castella; and grandniece Ines. He is preceded in passing by his father and mother, Stanley and Sara, and brother Keith, formerly of Fort Collins, CO.
Dale will be interred at Olinger Crown Hill Cemetery.
COMPARTA UN OBITUARIO
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