Dennis Eugene Erzinger Sr.

Dennis E. Erzinger, Sr. is now back home with God & his previously departed loved ones.

His exit leaves a vast wake and yet while no longer with us in physical form, the void holds space that is filling up with precious memories of his life, his courage, integrity, tenacity, perseverance, intellect, humor, kindness, generosity, love & passion for truth in its many forms.

A youth with difficult beginnings taught Dennis to rise above challenge & circumstance in search of solutions and a better way of life, becoming a building block on his path to success in college, career, family & his service to God & others.

Before he reached his 20’s, he served as a volunteer fireman and participated in leading youth outreach with his church. He had found refuge in Christ’s teachings at an early age & wished to share said truths with others.

His college years were full of student life & student government, leadership roles, organizing dances, fundraisers & events. Those who knew him said he was the ‘life of the party’. He graduated Carson Newman College where he met his soon-to-be wife, Kathy McClam, with a degree in Business & Accounting.

In his 20’s-30’s they married & had 2 children. His career began selling power tools for Skil, and Black & Decker & quickly promoted into a marketing position. His innovative, strategic vision & problem-solving led him into working engineers & scientist in R & D integrating new products into the global marketplace. He later worked for G.E. and Honeywell as a leader in management & international marketing with a passion for travel, making business deals & friends on every continent.

Though talented & successful, in his early 40’s his career was cut short with debilitating illness. It took years for him to accept but he never lost his faith in God or passion for missions work & his strategic planning in years prior allowed him to still provide for his family. In spite of illness, he chose to invest the time & energy he ‘did’ have into being there for his children, coaching his son’s hockey teams & mentoring his daughter through her teenage years into college with long talks, wisdom, love & guidance.

In the early 1990’s he traveled abroad on several missions trips. A defining life experience was being part of one of the first groups to travel to Russia after the collapse of the Iron Curtain. They were some of the first to carry Bibles into lands where it was once prohibited. He recounted, even 3 days before he passed, with tears in his eyes, about what that experience meant to him even still.

But what Dennis will be remembered for is not in part or total all his life experiences or accomplishments but how he lived with courage in the face of adversity, his will to fight & never give up, his desire to seek strategic solutions to any problem to improve anything he touched. He included his family in everything he loved leaving many memories to cherish. But most of all he will be remembered for his heart for others, his compassion, his generous spirit & who once literally gave the shirt off his back to a stranger. He will be remembered for his huge library, gifting of books to many, his quest for truth and knowledge and long conversations on the state of world affairs upheld by his Christian world view. He loved his family, his dogs & life itself & while we almost lost him last year, with God’s grace, Dennis’s tenacity along with the love and support of family, he had another whole year on this earth. And now he rests peacefully & forever in our hearts.

He is loved, adored, remembered & survived by his son Dennis E. Erzinger, Jr., his daughter Amberlyn (Erzinger) McKay, his brother David (& Margie) Erzinger & ex-spouse & friend, & mother of his children, Kathy Burgos.

A private burial was held on Friday July 11, 2026, with a Celebration of Life to follow on the 26th of July 2026.

Please share your thoughts online with the family at www.chattanoogaeastchapel.com

Arrangements entrusted to Chattanooga Funeral Home East Chapel