Dennis Brophy

Northwest College was burning.

Bridger Hall — a dormitory home to 101 students — had caught ablaze on the afternoon of March 30, 2004, and firefighters were losing the battle to save the building.

But in the nearby Frisby Building, NWC psychology Professor Dennis Brophy carried on with his class.

“We were out there trying to get students out of the residence hall and account for everybody and he [Brophy] was going to teach through it — and the smoke was coming through the building,” recalled Jeremy Johnston, then a NWC professor, adding, “There was no way a fire was going to stop him from teaching his students general psychology.”

Eventually, someone went down and told Brophy it wasn’t safe and that he had to leave the building. He reluctantly dismissed his class, frustrated about the lost instruction time.

“That guy, he lived and breathed for his students — even if it was in a smoky room,” Johnston laughed.

Brophy died last month at the age of 75, after being hit by a car on a Coulter Avenue sidewalk. In the days since then, his colleagues and students have been reflecting on his life.

While many professors have called Northwest College home over its history, none have been quite like Brophy.

To the Powell community at large, Brophy was best known for his ostentatious trucks, adorned with horns and decked out in chrome. As his family members put it in an obituary, “Dennis was ‘one of a kind’ and his creative spirit was very evident in his beloved vehicles.”

“Hands down, the single-most [common] question I was asked when I told folks I worked at NWC was, ‘Does the professor with the truck still work there?’” said Eric Silk, a former psychology professor at NWC. “What would follow were wild and wonderful stories about Professor Brophy.”

A college favorite

Brophy joined NWC as an associate professor in September 1975 and proceeded to teach at the community college for more than four decades. He retired in May 2016, then returned as an adjunct faculty member the following year before retiring for good in May 2018.

Over the years, he impacted too many students to count and formed long-standing relationships with his colleagues.

“Dr. Brophy was without a doubt my favorite teacher at NWC,” Timmy Kennedy, a former student, wrote in a Facebook post shortly after Brophy’s death.

“The world is a better place for him walking his life’s journey,” Kennedy wrote. “Our world is a lot darker without him.”

He recalled many conversations with the professor that resulted in laughter and uplifting advice. But it could take some work to get to know Brophy.

When Johnston sought a job at NWC in the mid-1990s, it was Brophy who conducted the interview. During the entire conversation, Brophy never looked up; he just kept writing down everything Johnston was saying.

“I walked out of there and I thought, ‘Oh good God, I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell in getting a job here,’” Johnston recalled.

But lo and behold, Brophy later arrived at Johnston’s home, came in and offered him the job as a visiting instructor.

“It was really rare when he would open up to anybody — and usually when he did, it was about something with the truck or his rose garden,” Johnston said.

When Val Cross, NWC’s social science and education division secretary, first started working at the college, Brophy said so little to her that she wondered what she’d done to upset him. But when they began talking about flowers one day, “it was just like a light bulb turned on,” Cross said, “and ever since then we were very good friends.”

Over the decades, she was among the colleagues that Brophy frequently invited to check out the rose garden behind his home. “If you have a minute, just stop by,” he would say.

“But a minute would end up being many hours,” Cross chuckled, “because Dennis would like to visit.”

The first day that Silk met Brophy, the two wound up speaking for hours about the scholarship of creativity, art, psychology, religion and world travel, Silk recalled.

World traveler

Brophy held a master of divinity and was a prolific traveler, visiting all seven continents, more than 55 countries and all 50 states.

“When he’d come back home, we’d have to sit for hours and hours and look at pictures and he’d explain everything that happened on his trip,” Cross said.

Brophy flew when he had to, but preferred to travel by bus — or in his famed truck.

“Every trip he took, something would happen to the truck; a tire would fall off or he’d run out of gas in the middle of nowhere,” Cross said. “And when he got back, we’d hear about the story.”

One of those misadventures took place right in front of the Frisby Building, when Brophy’s chromed-out Harley-Davidson caught fire — sending up flames between the legs of his pants. Brophy tried putting out the blaze with his leather gloves, but it was ultimately an alert student who retrieved a fire extinguisher and doused the fire.

Brophy told his colleagues the story the next morning and then went about his business, Johnston recalled with a laugh. “He’d go back to his classroom, his office [and] prepare for the next lecture.”

Brophy’s preparations were focused enough that he’d sometimes start setting up his film projector while Johnston was still finishing up his own lecture in the shared classroom. The interruptions “drove me crazy,” Johnston said, “but he was always making sure the students got their money’s worth.”

It was a similar story with Brophy’s famed truck.

The chrome-covered behemoth — labeled on the front end as the “High Rolling Headshrinker Hauler,” among other names — stood out both on the road and at NWC.

“We would cuss that thing. … You’d pull up in the morning and the sun’s reflecting off all those mirrors and you just have a million points of lights, piercing your eyes before you get to work,” Johnston said, adding that, “there were times at night you’d come up behind him and those headlights hit the fenders on that truck and … you couldn’t see anything.”

But the vehicle was part of his teaching.

Brophy had his students compose essays about the truck for an assignment.

“He had each student write a paper using at least 3 viewpoints of his truck — a child’s, female and mechanic were my choices, and that was my homage to him,” wrote Kennedy, the former student.

When using the truck for class, Brophy would park it right in front of the building — and Cross’ office.

“The mirrors on it would reflect and in the afternoon, you’d look out and it’d be blinding you,” she said. “But the kids were out there standing, looking at it and taking notes.”

Brophy didn’t care if the students wrote that they thought the truck was horrible; he just wanted them to tell the truth, Cross said.

He also used his clothing — namely “those Mexican wrestling boots that he would wear” — as instruction, said Johnston. “I mean, the guy lived to teach.”

Between his attire and vehicles, Brophy cut an unusual character in the community.

“Dennis was a contradiction — a highly private man, but clearly was also a fan of little bit of attention,” said Silk. “His vehicles, wardrobe, boots, all uniquely Dennis.”

The oddities spawned some apocryphal stories.

People who grew up in Powell during Brophy’s years at NWC likely heard one tall tale — invariably relayed by a friend of a friend or some other fourth-hand account — claiming that the professor had wet his pants in front of his class and asked them to analyze his actions. But that was nothing more than a rural legend, Johnston said.

“About every two years that damn story would circulate around,” he said. “And we’d have to tell the students, ‘No, no, didn’t happen.’”

Leaving a legacy

While teaching at NWC consumed much of Brophy’s life, he also was actively involved in Red Lodge Community Church and previously served as an education minister.

Additionally, he was an active supporter of the arts. Perhaps most notably, he was the driver and initial funding source behind a large mural of Heart Mountain now installed at NWC’s Yellowstone Building. Brophy was part of a committee charged with choosing art for the building as it was being planned. He wound up being so drawn to the mural concept submitted by Deborah Dickinson of Bellingham, Washington, that he offered to fund the piece with his own money.

He also created the Dennis Brophy Public Art Endowment “that will allow NWC to purchase and grow its art collection for placement within buildings or on campus grounds,” said Shelby Wetzel, executive director of the NWC Foundation. Funds from his endowment helped pay for the metal sculpture located on the east side of the Yellowstone Building.

“One of Dennis’ goals was to support NWC alumni who are artists by purchasing and showcasing their works at their alma mater,” Wetzel added

At Washington University in St. Louis — where Brophy obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology — he established an eponymous scholarship and fellowship fund for students focused on creativity while making “a generous commitment” to endow a Dennis R. Brophy Visiting Professorship, university officials said, noting his “valuable support.”

Brophy’s legacy will live on in the endowments, the artwork and the students he’s influenced over the decades.

Cross said that Brophy “was a very unique person, very different from a lot of people in Powell — and a lot of people I know anywhere else.” However, she said, “at the end of the day, he was just like the rest of us, a very kind person [who] would do anything for you.”

“Dennis lived his own creative life,” added Silk. “The High Rolling Headshrinker — he will be sorely missed.”