Obituary: Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker fought floods and built up city

Dennis Walaker, the flood mayor of Fargo, was a larger-than-life folk hero with a booming laugh and an abiding devotion to the town he helped build from the sewer lines up.

Walaker died at home Dec. 2 after a months-long battle with cancer. He was 73.

"He was the voice and the face of Fargo," said Fargo Public Works Supervisor Lee Anderson.

Funny, kind, shy, cagey, competent and devastatingly candid, Walaker waged epic battles against the frigid floodwaters of the Red River of the North, mobilizing tens of thousands of volunteers again and again to sandbag along the banks of the flood-prone river and spare the low-lying city from rising water.

Every spring, when the southern thaws started pushing meltwater up the north-flowing Red toward Fargo, Walaker would shrug off the official weather predictions and drive the length of the river to gauge the risk for himself. If the risk seemed high, he'd swing into action.

"He took it very seriously and he was very accurate. When it was flood time, we would go south of town and drive Highway 46, and he would count how many approaches were underwater. And by that he knew how much water was probable," said Anderson, who accompanied Walaker on many of his flood-predicting forays. "It wasn't an exact science, but boy, it worked for him."

Fargo's director of engineering, Mark Bittner, worked with Walaker for the better part of 40 years, including the massive 1997 flood, when his department worked for 11 consecutive weeks without a day off. Through that crisis and others to follow, he said, Walaker radiated calm and reassurance to his city and its workers.

"He has such a calming influence, such a calming persona, that people know that even if they were screwing up in the worst way, they had confidence if Denny said it was going to be OK," Bittner said.

Walaker came to work for Fargo in 1974 as a civil engineer, eventually heading up the Public Works Department and spearheading the city's emergency management response. He was the kind of boss, Bittner said, who showed up for every birthday party and every funeral. He was first elected mayor in 2006 and was still celebrating his re-election to a third term this year when doctors diagnosed the cancer attacking his kidneys.

He fought the disease with the same tenacity he once fought the icy floodwaters. He attended city commission meetings in a wheelchair. Bittner recently took his longtime friend on a tour of construction projects in the booming city — one of the fastest-growing in the country.

His hometown paper, the Fargo Forum, collected reminiscences from his grieving friends, neighbors and occasional political rivals.

"Dennis was a hard person not to like," said Brad Wimmer, who ran against Walaker for mayor this year. "He was actually very quiet in his mannerisms, although he would speak his piece. He would tell things as he saw them. He wasn't afraid to speak out."

Walaker was born in Fargo on Jan. 10, 1941, the oldest son of Gladys and Ray Walaker Sr., and raised in Leonard, N.D., with his two brothers and his sister. The 6-foot-5 Walaker attended North Dakota State University and played basketball for the Bison. He developed a lifelong love of the Thundering Herd, sometimes traveling as far as Texas and Alabama to watch his team play in championships. His obituary ended with the words: "GO BISON."

He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Mary, a schoolteacher he met on a blind date; daughters Erin Hall and Shannon Walaker; a sister, Renae Wenner, and two grandsons.

Jennifer Brooks • 612-673-4008