Dennis G. Golombek didn’t have just one career.
He had three: newspaper reporter, sheriff's deputy and art teacher.
His first was his dream job: working as a reporter at the Courier-Express. When rioters threw rocks and police threw tear gas during the 1970 Allentown Art Festival, he was there. When riots broke out at the University at Buffalo and Buffalo State College, he covered them.
“He was held captive in the dean’s office at Buffalo State,” said his wife, Marie Golombek. “Students kept him there because they wanted him to report the story their way.”
The next year, when Marie was pregnant with their only child, Golombek covered the inmate riot at the Attica Correctional Facility. He and other reporters would phone in their stories from a restaurant near the prison.
“He would tell the story about one reporter who took the mouthpiece out of the phone so nobody else could call their story in,” his wife recalled.
Golombek eventually decided to become a deputy at the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, where he did fingerprinting and photography. He once donned a beard to work undercover at a Rolling Stones concert to take pictures of people buying marijuana.
One day, though, his neck and arm were injured, ending his career in law enforcement. While he was off from work, raising the couple’s daughter Carrie, he returned to school to earn a second bachelor’s degree, this one in fine arts.
“He was like a professional student,” Marie Golombek said.
Golombek began painting and taking photographs. And then one day, he and his wife were at a party and ran into the North Tonawanda School District superintendent, who offered Golombek a job teaching art.
He primarily taught middle school students, whom he loved, Marie Golombek said. They fondly called him “Mr. G.”
“He would have detention, and he would play opera and Japanese flute music for those kids in detention,” she said. “And guess what – they never came back.”
He retired from teaching in 2005, but continued pursuing his photography, focusing on nature shots and macro photography.
Born in Buffalo, Golombek grew up in the Bailey-Delavan area, attending school and church at St. Gerard’s, then graduating from St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute in 1962. He earned bachelor’s degrees in English and fine arts, and a master of arts degree, all at UB.
He met his future wife, also a UB student, at an Ogden Nash lecture at the university.
“He was behind me. He kept bothering me and wouldn’t stop,” said his wife, the former Marie Siconolfi. “We got together eventually, but it took him five years to get married.”
Last summer, he fell at home and went to the McAuley Residence in Tonawanda for rehab. His dementia progressed, and he eventually lost the ability to walk.
On May 5, when his wife FaceTimed with him, Golombek had lost the ability to speak. That evening, the staff told her he had tested positive for Covid-19. He was sent to Catholic Health's Covid-19 treatment facility on the St. Joseph Campus.
The following week, Golombek was sent to Mercy Hospital for a breathing evaluation. Marie Golombek was allowed to spend 30 minutes there with her husband of 52 years on May 11. Two hours later, he died.
“We had an interment at Mount Olivet with 12 people. I couldn’t even hug my own daughter,” she said.
Golombek was 75 years old.
“It’s really upsetting when you hear people saying I don’t know why I have to wear this mask,” Marie Golombek said. “He would breathe in, but when he breathed out, the most horrible sound came out of his chest. It was horrible to watch.”
