Richard Merritt Fish

German Linguist

October 8, 1946 - February 21, 1987. Born in Minneapolis, Dick died in Denver.    As a blond, curly-haired little boy, he went to Page School and then Blake. He was in Cub, then Boy Scouts and got an early taste of the mountains when he attended the national Scout Jamboree in Colorado Springs.

Dick started college at the University of Denver. At the end of his first year, he enlisted in the Army and served most of his four years as a German language interpreter with the Army Security Agency in West Berlin, Germany. Following his tour, he returned to the University of Denver where he graduated with a major in French. He spent his junior year in France at the University of Strasbourg.

On graduation he announced he was going to be a musician. A major influence must have been the 3-1/2 years he sang with the Johannischer Chor Berlin. So, Dick and his guita,r "Machine", started out. Then came Mr. Fish and Freddie, Lodestar, Ace-High Dealers, Wildlife, Both Barrels, Fish and Chips, and finally the Tollgate Band in Central City, CO, his musical home after 1982.

His fascination with math and computers influenced him to enter graduate school at the University of Colorado-Denver in 1983; he was nearing completion of his work toward an MBA.

Among his musician friends, he was known as Fish or Mr. Fish - the latter emblazoned on his Colorado license plates.