Donald "Don" Gentz

Donald Gentz was born on the 5th of December, 1952, to Warren and Mary Ellen Gentz in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had an older brother, Douglas, and a younger sister, Julie, as well as a half-sister, Cynthia, from Warren's previous marriage. He was an Eagle Scout, and played bagpipes in the Creek Nation Pipes and Drums in the late '60s and early '70s.

During college at Oklahoma State University, he pledged Delta Upsilon fraternity, but his primary community was the Hideaway Pizza Restaurant, where he worked from 1970 to 1980. He graduated from OSU with honors and a degree in Psychology in 1975.

Don's passion for photography led him to motion pictures, first a low-budget indie feature then documentaries and commercials with Tulsa Studios. He went on to work on The Outsiders, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and shot in Tulsa. The highlight of this phase was a documentary shot in China in 1981. Don's career took a circuitous path. He worked at KJRH, TV2, in Tulsa and later for corporate and commercial photography services, as well as freelancing for ABC Sports. He found full-time work and friends at Texas Woman's University Health Sciences Center at Dallas, where he served as Media specialist from 1987 to 2001. He also taught advanced photography classes in the evening at Collin County Community College for many years. He later became a public-school teacher, specializing in technology and videography. He earned a Master's Degree in 2011 in Educational Technology Leadership. He served on the board of TAET (Texas Association of Educational Technology) and received numerous awards and recognition for his contributions to improving technology and for his countless and unselfish hours of volunteer work in the public schools and at the Richardson Adult Literacy Center. Before his health prevented it, he was a regular blood donor, contributing over six gallons of blood to Carter Blood Center.

In the winter of 1981, Don found the love of his life, Angela Oliver. They married the following summer and lived and worked in Tulsa until 1985, welcoming a daughter, Nellidy, there in 1984. They later relocated to North Texas and added a second daughter, Hillary, in 1988. The girls were the light of Don's life and his proudest achievement. He gloried in their successes, fretted over their challenges, and lived in constant astonishment that he could have helped create two such fierce, loving, and wondrous beings. His relentless curiosity about all things and his childlike joy in new facts and discoveries fueled his version of fatherhood. Don was a treasure trove of connected and sometimes disconnected facts, and to the end he never lost his fascination with science, nature, and history. Everyone near him benefited, his daughters most of all.

Don took joy in small things and formed close and lasting bonds with every dog the family adopted. In one famous instance, when Jacob-Bear, an extended-family member and Chow Chow, was held in San Antonio's animal control, Don traveled in from Garland and read poetry - to the dog. Jacob, being an animal wo, if he had worn shoes, would have surely worn spats as well, much appreciated.

In 2019, in retirement, Don and Angela left to travel America in their pickup and travel trailer, but soon found themselves "locked down" in Port Aransas during the Pandemic, and later camped in San Antonio during the blizzard of Feb 2021.

For reasons that remained unclear to him even to his death, he became estranged from his siblings after the death of his parents. Nevertheless, he remained an essential and much-loved member of his family through Angela, where two nieces and six nephews adored him and came to know him as a central figure of every gathering. He taught them woodworking, built shelves and desks with them, traveled cross-country with his nephew, Patrick, filled in for absent fathers, and joined many of them in the Grand Canyon for a last hurrah when his kidney disease made death imminent. Most of the photographs of family events for more than three decades came from Don's camera, a story told with Don's unerring eye. He supported his wife through dozens of surgeries and hospitalizations and his mother-in-law, JimAnn Oliver, through the ten years of injury, aging, and Alzheimers that would eventually take her life. He was, as they say, "a stand-up guy." There has never been better.

He died peacefully at home on May 24, 2026, after a four-year battle with kidney disease. He was surrounded by his immediate family and their dogs - just the way he wanted to pass. They had enjoyed a good and casual day of love and fun, and there was no pressing reason to believe that this day would be his last; but Don - never one to cause problems and always thinking of others - must have known that it was the perfect day to choose his release. And he did. His family is grateful for the gift of his presence, and the gift of his passing, and we will miss him always.