The Renaissance Man

The Egyptian Queen Aita appeared with hundreds of men behind her. Sonorous music filled the air as the queen moved to the center of the stage. Bare chested, dressed in a coat of glimmering Egyptian armor, a young Dennis Lehr stood behind the Queen on the Metropolitan Opera stage with command, holding a spear in his right hand. With a single beam of light shining directly onto his face, Lehr stood by the other extras in position, barely able to make out the almost four thousand audience members. Few people realized he was playing two roles that evening: one as an Egyptian soldier, and the other as a man hiding his identity.

Lehr was born and raised in Manhattan. He hesitated when the subject of his childhood was brought up. One of the first things he said when I had asked him about his upbringing was, “I learned to run very fast.” 

Through attending Joan of Arc High School, Dennis and his friends decided to form a Jewish gang and call themselves The Sultans. Every Saturday he and his friends would leave their apartments wearing Kippahs, a traditional Jewish brimless cap that is a sign of devoutness in  Jewish culture. This Kippa acted as a target for Dennis and the Sultans. “There were bad kids who tried to kill me…It happened everyday.” 

Teeny Lehr, Dennis’s mother, made sure their house never strayed from maintaining their Jewish heritage, no matter how much antisemitism they faced. Every Friday night, or Shabbat, Teeny would make her infamous chicken soup —  chopping, stirring, and tasting as the sounds of Mozart, Chopin, and Liszt played in the background. As Dennis claimed, “There really is no recipe. She just figured out what should go in and what shouldn’t.” For Dennis this tradition was sacred and was the reason he never missed Shabbat dinner until he left college.  

Music was a staple for Dennis, especially in a world full of chaos that would rather kill him than accept his religion. Classical, Jazz, Opera — they all could be found playing in the Lehr household 24/7. His connection to music inspired him to take matters into his own hands. Down on 48th street, or as he called it “the musical street,” there was a line of stores that taught you how to play all sorts of instruments. There, Dennis learned how to play the electric guitar and the drums. Eventually, he formed his very own jazz band called The Dennis James Trio. While different musicians in the band came and went throughout his highschool and college years, Dennis always remained the one solid member. 

A newly minted college freshman at NYU, Lehr was determined to get The Dennis James Trio on the scene. Soon enough, the trio  was hired by NYU  to play on a boat ride to Bear Mountain, a scenic overlook about an hour away from the university, for a student picnic. The students gathered onto the boat and spread out on the deck to admire the views from the water as they took in the band’s signature smooth Jazz. Dennis took in his surroundings on the deck of the boat. While playing, one girl in particular caught his eye — Enid Auerbach. Dennis finished his set as the boat docked. As couples broke off from the group and settled on red and white checkered picnic blankets, Dennis began to formulate a plan.  As he walked towards Enid and her date, Dennis looked up, locking eyes with the breathtakingly beautiful woman in front of him. 

“Do you have any spare food?” he asked her with the suavest demeanor. 

Despite a huff from Enid’s date, she gave him her spare food without any hesitation. In that moment they claimed they both knew that they were looking at the person they would spend the rest of their lives with. 

Their love story began at Bear Mountain and continued in the hallways of NYU where Enid would run across campus from her classes to Dennis’ in the hope of “accidentally” running into him. Their weekly rendevous’ on Flatbush Avenue allowed Dennis and Enid to create their own song — set to the tempo of their footsteps. 

While in college Dennis’s flair for the arts didn’t stop at music. Dennis enrolled in many art classes where he developed a love for painting, specifically oil painting. His talent only grew as he practiced, and his love for painting lasted all the way through the army, law school, being a lawyer in DC, working for the White House, and even raising three children of his own. Not to mention the seven grandchildren he also taught to paint, including me.

Dennis has always been a man of many passions. Yet you would not know it from afar. After a long day at the White House, Dennis would come home, loosen his red tie, slip off his navy suit jacket, and turn on Rimsky Corsikoff while opening up his favorite novel, Gulliver’s Travels.

When talking to Enid, she couldn’t help but smile, reflecting on the life she made with Dennis.

“I didn’t need the web, I didn’t need encyclopedias. If I had a question, I would ask Papa (our nickname for him), and he always knew the answer. That’s why I called him my Renaissance Man. He did so much in his lifetime.”


Dennis’s Sultans Jacket

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