Dennis Casler Tool

Dennis Casler Tool, 78, of the Land’s End Community on St. Helena Island, died on March 25, 2026, after a long illness. He was born on March 11, 1948, in Biloxi, Mississippi, to H. Warren Tool, Jr. of Denver, Colorado, an FBI agent, and Dorothy Jeanne Casler of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a medical technologist. He attended public schools and was a member of Biloxi High School’s Class of 1965. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Ole Miss and a Master of Fine Arts in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. After teaching English and foreign language for 25 years at the University of Wyoming, Clemson University, and the University of South Carolina, Dennis left the classroom at age 50 to re-train in health care, going on to work for another dozen years as a Radiologic Technologist for community hospitals and clinics in the U.S. and New Zealand, where he became a dual citizen in 2015. He is survived by his wife of 26 years, Susan Wise Walker, and by his three younger sisters: Nancy Farnie of Charlotte, NC; Kathleen O’Niel of Colorado Springs, CO; and Janice Agle of Matthews, NC, and their families. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that any memorial donations go to Compassion and Choices Vermont, in support of their advocacy of medical aid in dying.

And a P.S.:

Dennis Tool, of course, wanted to write his own obituary, and in it he certainly gets all the above facts right – he loved precision. But he does omit a few things: along with the facts come a character, a style, a personality, and a sense of adventure embedded rather deeply between those lines. Dennis had a love of travel and discovery, and beginning in the freewheeling Sixties these qualities took him through Greek caves and Parisian streets, Spanish waiting rooms and British bed-sits, enjoying, living, learning, and befriending. In his late forties, he designed and built his first (and only) house, thereafter opening it to family and friends to enjoy right along with him. In his fifties, he transformed himself from an academic into a med-tech, and picked up a new national citizenship along the way. His quick wit and love of language enlivened many dinner parties and conversations, as well as giving rise to an occasional poem and countless bon mots. He was the exotic Southerner who enjoyed travel yet also appreciated the qualities of home, hearth, and family. He loved where he lived, and he generously lent his talents and sense of fun to local politics, the arts, and environmental and community causes, sometimes as an incognito benefactor. Loved deeply by his friends and family and worshiped by his pets, he will be so very, very missed. –Susan Walker