Dennis Lee Maschka, 62, of Austin, took care of the city’s parks the way the Garden of Eden was tended.

The Rev. Tom McDonough, a first-cousin of the deceased, said he saw the first garden’s beauty in Austin’s parks when he arrived in the city this week to officiate at Maschka’s funeral.

The sea of well-maintained tall trees and green grass McDonough saw was “Denny’s mind and heart” at work.

Maschka died Sunday, June 22 at St. Marys Hospital, Rochester, of complications from colon surgery. He was surrounded by his family.

His funeral Friday morning was the first ever held in Riverside Arena. All city employees were granted three hours off work Friday to attend the funeral.

The Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department parked its vehicles outside the Arena in honor of their fallen supervisor.

Inside, one-half the arena’s floor was filled with the grieving celebrating the funeral mass with four priests and the other half with a make-shift dining room.

The “altar” was a stage beneath the north scoreboard in the hockey arena.

Local nurseries displayed mature trees for a backdrop.

There was one of Austin’s unique antique city street lights holding baskets of petunias.

The man everyone knew as “Denny” was honored in death as much as he was celebrated in life.

The last song sung Friday was “New York, New York,” a fitting enough tune for the man about whom so many are spreading good news today.

Background

When he moved to Austin to become assistant director of the Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department, he jump-started his vision of public service.

In 1992, Maschka assumed the position of executive director of the department, when Bob Auer retired and the rest is history, begging the question, “Who has done more for the city?”

Jack Thill, a generous Austin businessman, said Maschka made a deep impact.

“I took Chuck Wilson (also a well-known philanthropist) for a ride last week after he died,” Thill said. “We went through Todd Park and some other parks and I told Chuck, ‘What a job he did to make the town a better place, what a legacy he leaves behind in all our parks for everyone to enjoy.’”

Former Austin Mayor Bonnie Rietz, a close friend of the deceased, who read a lesson Friday morning, said earlier tha Maschka “always seemed to be around,” and no wonder. His career and private life overlapped into all kinds of community endeavors.

Like the citizen-soldier he was for 20 years in the Minnesota National Guard, he was a citizen-volunteer in Austin. So much so that it was hard to separate work from pleasure in the man’s life.

Even the Rev. Paul Nelson, one of four priests to officiate at Friday’s funeral, said his civic associations “are too many to enumerate today.”

Not only directing the PRF department and its ever expanding workload to manage 29 parks and flood buyout areas, but serving the community as a whole brought out the best in Maschka.

The breadth and width of his involvement speaks volumes about the Maschka:

Spruce Up Austin, Inc., Austin Community Pride Day, Austin Rotary Club, Austin Exchange Club, Austin Jaycees, Toastmasters Club, Austin Elks Lodge, Blandin Foundation Leadership Training Program, Freedom Fest USA, The Main Street Project, George A. Hormel Plaza committee, Paramount Theatre, Austin Youth Football and Basketball, refereeing Southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa High School football, Queen of Angels Church parish council, board member for Austin Catholic Religious Education, Austin Area Catholic Schools.

That’s the official list from his family. Who can match that kind of community involvement?

Eulogies spoken

McDonough said his cousin could “light up a room with his smile” and held a commitment to a positive attitude no matter what distress.

“That was Denny’s beauty of the soul, that was the interior garden he maintained throughout life,” McDonough said.

The Rev. Nelson was a new priest fresh out of the seminary some 47 years ago when he came to Austin to teach religion classes at Pacelli High School.

He remembered Maschka, the teenager, as a “merry prankster.”

When he and close friend Rietz visited Maschka in the intensive care unit at the Rochester hospital, Nelson recalled how Rietz’s words of praise fell on deaf ears of the dying man.

Nelson said something else was still at work in Maschka’s presence at the end and “you could tell his spirit was happy.”

Perhaps, the best eulogy came out of the spotlight from a 7-year-old niece, Abby, who, McDonough said, told her mother, “Tell Uncle Denny for me that he lived a full, fun life and that he was a very good man.”

Mayer Funeral Home estimated 1,500 people attended the Thursday visitation and Friday funeral, making it the largest in recent Austin history.