Bothell-Kenmore Reporter
April 20, 2005

Architect's work mirrors clients' personalities

As an architect, Dennis Depape's daily challenge and joy is to infuse the personalities and passions of his clients into their homes. The 51-year-old Kenmore man mostly designs houses, including remodels, additions and new construction at his Lake Forest Park office. His wife, Kathy, 50, is a risk manager for a health organization and a registered nurse. The couple has four grown children and seven grandchildren. The baptismal fonts at St. Joseph's of Issaquah and St. Joseph's of Chehalis are two of his more unusual, and in many ways, satisfying designs in recent years, as well as an example of how ideas can go into a design. The Chehalis font in particular features a hand-blown glass bowl that's 28 inches in diameter. The bowl's confusing swirl of color at the base represents chaos, he explained. The rising colors, which become more ordered like the physical world, contain silver flecks, symbols for individual souls. The silver flecks move up to the bowl's silver rim, the transition into the everlasting.

What is one thing about you that few people know?
I was in the seminary for four-and-a-half years. I don't often tell people because it was a long time ago. I was discerning a life choice.

What came out of that experience?
How important it is to be in service to one another. When I am in touch with my gifts and my purpose, things move from the ordinary to the extraordinary. I have found (community service) is essential to maintaining balance in my life. The challenge is to be open to the goodness that is around us.

What is your biggest challenge day to day?
Sometimes the most challenging thing of any day or any string of days is to be listening with the heart to the events and the people around me and the interactions of people. The challenge is to be present so that I can be connected to what is going on. Sometimes I let myself go through life so quickly and with such blinders on that I am not aware of what is going on around me. And that is unfortunate by my standards. The richer moments come when I am open to the things people say and the space between the words.

--JENNY LYNN ZAPPALA

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