Dennis Mack Silver

Dennis Mack Silver was born in Salt Lake City on November 30, 1941. His father Clarence Richards "Bud" Silver bought his mother Lucy May Carter Silver a portable radio to listen to in the hospital. Dennis' love of radio may have stemmed from this early exposure. It is noteworthy that they listened to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7.

The grandson of C. W. Silver, owner of an electrical parts and construction company, Dennis showed an early affinity for all things electrical and mechanical. He learned to read from Popular Mechanics magazines, became a ham radio operator using sets he built himself as an adolescent, and developed an abiding interest in photography. He took many of the pictures in his yearbook at East High School and later supplied some photography for local newspapers. Upon the advice of a professional photographer, he chose to stick to the more lucrative engineering tract for his career.

At his first job in radio as an announcer in Brigham City, the advertisers asked the station to take him off the air. However, the engineer there had a problem that he couldn't figure out for a few weeks that took Dennis about an hour to fix. Dennis found that job paid twice as much as an announcer and never looked back.

Dennis initially enrolled at Weber State University for their engineering program, then was called on an LDS mission to West Germany. He was sent home after only a few months because of dangerous weight loss from excessive mission fasting, a trend set by fellow missionaries. Dennis was reassigned to the Northwestern States Mission where he served the remainder of his mission in Spokane, Washington, and Sandpoint, Idaho.

Upon completion he enrolled at Brigham Young University, where he met Kayleen Gardner before being drafted during the Vietnam War. As he recounted, fixing a commanding officer's TV as a favor resulted in his being assigned to Okinawa instead of a combat area. This latter facilitated his marriage to Kayleen who was able to join him in Okinawa. She arrived just before a typhoon was coming in and their daughter Sariah May Silver (Hillam) was born nine months later in 1970.

Dennis was next stationed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. A second daughter, Elise Kayleen Silver (Clarke) was born in 1971. Upon his release from the army, they returned to Utah and bought a small house in Granger (which later became part of West Valley City). Two boys, Joseph Silver and Andrew Clarence Silver, joined the family in 1973 and 1975.

Dennis continued college classes at the University of Utah and worked in electronic repairs while building his reputation in the local radio industry. By the end of the 1970s, he was working exclusively in his own business as an independent radio engineer and moved his family up the street to a larger house to accommodate his growing family and collection of equipment for his work. He stayed in this house until the last year of his life despite his family leaving in 1980. Soon after the separation, his last child, Rachel Maime Silver, died moments after birth.

Dennis' life revolved around the needs of his multiple radio stations where he contracted. He worked on most of the AM and FM stations on the Wasatch Front as well as many stations in rural Utah and across the Intermountain West. He logged thousands of hours traveling to build and work on stations in Elko, Nevada; Thermopolis, Wyoming; and Show Low, Arizona. He expanded his practice to installing television station transmitters on some of the same towers from which he had radio frequencies broadcasting.

Dennis’ efforts included applying for FCC approval for radio frequencies, designing and installing towers and transmitters, and repairing old and new systems alike. He was a longtime member of the National Translators Association and the IEEE, attending the broadcasters’ convention in Las Vegas every year to keep up on new developments in the field.

Dennis even designed a duplex transmitter that would allow two AM frequencies to be broadcast from the same tower. The amplitude of an AM signal is dictated by the height of the tower itself, and no one prior to Dennis had previously discovered how to overcome this limitation. While he loved teaching other impressed broadcasters about his innovative design, he was just as proud to teach his grandson's Boy Scout troop about radio for a merit badge. He was happiest when explaining electrical theory or the mechanics of a system to an interested learner in terms they could understand.

Dennis was also very involved in the local Republican Party, attending nearly every caucus and serving as a delegate to multiple county and state conventions. Even so, his political savvy fell short with his second wife Wendy in the early 1990’s who annulled their marriage after a few short years.

On April 15, 2009, he married his longtime friend and helper, Louise Lindorf. She encouraged him to become better as she accompanied him to family gatherings and work sites, navigated multiple health issues, and was present for him at the hospital when he died after a series of strokes.

Dennis always said he would never retire because his work was too much fun. Dennis survived heart attacks, bankruptcy, multiple bouts with cancer, electrocution, and a major auto accident that killed his favorite pet dog April. He could overcome nearly anything except the loss of his brain's ability to continue engineering. He died on June 11, 2015.

Dennis was preceded in death by his parents, his daughter Rachel, and his brother Stephen. He is survived by six younger siblings, Alice Watson (Lee), Carol Kurth (Larry), Marilyn Wood (David), Robert Silver (Mary Ann), Heber Silver (Marta), and Janet Beverley (Peter); and four children, Sariah Hillam (David), Elise Clarke (Steve), Joseph Silver (Natalja), and Andrew Silver (Claudia). He has ten grandchildren.

The funeral will be held Friday, June 26th. 10:00 am viewing, 11:00 am service at 3175 S 3450 W in West Valley City.

Condolences may be sent to the family at www.valleyviewfuneral.com.