On stage, actor Wayne Kennedy was always playing a father. Off stage, Wayne Kennedy was always being a father.

Kennedy’s signature roles, from among dozens of choices, were unquestionably two: Tevye, the Russian milkman with the five independent-minded daughters in “Fiddler on the Roof.” And Tateh, the entrepreneurial immigrant in “Ragtime” whose name in Yiddish literally means “father.”

Of Tevye, a character he played four times over 23 years, Kennedy once said: “It seems like it comes naturally out of my heart.”

Slideshow: Wayne Kennedy photos

I met Kennedy as the real-life kind of dad. The year was 2001, shortly after I had been tasked with covering the theater beat for The Denver Post. Kennedy was already the 10-year anchor of what was then called Boulder’s Dinner Theatre. My first exposure to him was not as a performer in a musical. It was witnessing how beloved he was at a packed benefit performance organized by his BDT colleagues.

Wayne and wife Julie’s 1-year-old son, Joey, had been diagnosed with leukemia and would require a three-year course of chemotherapy. The couple’s helpless friends couldn’t will the disease away, but they could do what actors do: They put on a show that raised $15,000 to help defray medical expenses, with major contributions from neighboring theater companies like the late Heritage Square Music Hall in Golden, and the Town Hall Arts Center in Littleton.

This is how loved Kennedy was: His dentist ran the Las Vegas Marathon to raise donations for the cause. His dentist!

And this is how loved Kennedy was: At least three couples over the years have asked him to officiate their weddings.

There is nothing these people would not do for Kennedy, because there was nothing he would not do for them.

Even with 33 years as the patriarchal face of BDT Stage – which closed last year after a final remarkable run of “Fiddler” – Kennedy spread his talents across the state. He made significant impressions at the Arvada Center and the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Johnstown, where he played his final role, as the title curmudgeon in a musical take on “Scrooge.” He even cracked the mighty Denver Center, where he was cast in three very different projects.

All the more people who knew of Kennedy and are all the more gutted now by the news that Kennedy died peacefully Saturday (Aug. 16) of pancreatic cancer. He was 64. Kennedy, who enjoyed a lifelong parallel career as an award-winning sound designer, was diagnosed in April 2024, just three months after BDT closed for good – and just days after finishing a run as the sound designer for the Arvada Center’s celebrated musical “The Great Comet.”

Kennedy was simply a giant in the Colorado performing-arts community, said Michael J. Duran, who was the Artistic Director at the BDT Stage for most of Kennedy’s time there. “It’s a loss that cannot be filled,” Duran said. And not just because Kennedy was a good guy. He was also a really good actor – a highly skilled, technical actor who managed to make his every exact move seem genuine and fully spontaneous in the moment.

“If you talk to anyone at BDT, they will say that place is a family,” said former Westword critic Juliet Wittman. “And if they are a family, then Wayne Kennedy is the heart and soul of that family. I just think he’s the backbone.

“I think what is so beautiful about his work is that it’s so deep and so honest. He can be very funny – and he can just break your heart.”  

Kennedy will leave behind plenty of awards that can speak to his success as an actor. He also leaves two sons who, by their very existence, can speak to his success as a father. Joey survived his leukemia and is now an all grown-up “Joe.” Both Joe and older brother Sam are chemical engineers. You read that right. Sam was even the class valedictorian at Colorado School of Mines.

“Well, they certainly get all of that from their father,” Julie said, managing one hint of a laugh on this otherwise somber Sunday.

Receiving the humbling gift of a miracle – Joe surviving his childhood leukemia – has informed Wayne and Julie’s parenting every day for the past 25 years, she said.

“Wayne’s passion for both of his kids was beyond any passion any father could have for their kids,” said Julie. “We just let them be who they were. Throughout their school years, they both knew what they needed to do, and they did it. And they both became just the most amazing young men.”

Motorin’ into the world

Wayne Kennedy was born in Denver to Calvin Kennedy and Margaret Bailey on June 28, 1961. And he was named, I kid you not, after a car engine. Calvin, now 97, has been a longtime member of the Denver Timing Association, but you can call them what they unofficially are: The Burnin’ Rubber Club. Hot-rod aficionados.

Calvin so loves the sport that he named his son after a Chevy inline 6-cylinder motor with a Wayne 12-port racing head. As dads do.

Wayne graduated from Jefferson High School in Lakewood before earning his BFA in 1983 from Loretto Heights College, which at the time was the leading theater-training program in the Rocky Mountain West. He went on to get his master’s degree in directing at the University of Utah.

Perhaps the most awful story I’ve ever covered as a journalist was the arrest and conviction of University of Northern Colorado professor Vance Fulkerson, who regularly abused his power as the head of the school’s musical-theater program to create sexual opportunities with vulnerable students. Corroborating witnesses called it a pattern of planned seductions that went back more than 30 years, including stays at his two previous colleges: Loretto Heights and the University of Utah. Where Kennedy was a student, both times.

Kennedy, who was married in college and therefore never a viable target, came forward and publicly took all three universities to task for allowing the abuse to continue over decades. Fulkerson was convicted for the felony sexual exploitation of five children in 2010 and served three years in prison.

Kennedy slowly built up his post-collegiate acting resume in Utah but was adrift by the end of the 1980s. His marriage to his college sweetheart had run its course, so he packed up his piece-of-junk Chevy Vega, drove to Alaska and took a job as a fisherman.

“He was packing salmon for eight months and living in a tent on the lake,” said Seamus McDonough, who was BDT’s final artistic director, “just to kind of clear his head and reevaluate his life.”

That life began anew both on stage and off when he came to Boulder in 1991 to play Freddy (The American) in BDT’s “Chess.” But there was one other major draw: A cute busser named Julie, who doubled as a spotlight operator. She bathed Kennedy’s face in light and sent his head into the clouds. The busser and the star: A match made against the geopolitical backdrop of the Cold War, served hot with chicken cordon bleu.

“Yeah, isn’t that crazy?” said Julie. “I don’t know how that happened.”

It happened because “just about everyone was trying to set us up and get us together,” she said. And they succeeded. It started with little dates at Bennigan’s after the show. Julie was smitten.

“Well, he was pretty darn cute for one thing,” she said. “I mean, he walked in one day and started working, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who is this guy?’ She soon discovered that not only was Kennedy talented on stage, “he can fix anything, and he can build anything,” she said. On top of that: His dad worked for her favorite team, the Denver Broncos.

Deal sealed. Love, then marriage, then Sam. Then Joe.

Then leukemia. Kennedy was performing in “Gypsy” when Joey was diagnosed.

“The Colorado theater community rallied around that family for sure,” said McDonough, “but what amazed me was that Wayne only missed a week of shows. He would go from the theater to the hospital, be with Joey all night, and then come to work and do it all over again.

“Wayne was an incredible performer, but he was an even greater father and husband.”

All roads lead to ‘Fiddler’

Through the years, Wayne became the go-to-guy to play some of the biggest roles in the canon – Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady,” The Phantom in “Phantom,” and “Quixote” in “The Man of La Mancha,” to name a few. By the time he played Max Bialystock, the world’s most unlikely boy toy, in “The Producers” in 2009, there was no question that BDT and Wayne Kennedy had become synonymous.

But it always came back around to Tevye. First in 2000, then ’02, then ’14. When BDT’s owners made the decision to sell the building to housing developers, McDonough knew there could only be one way for this to end. With Kennedy and his three-time Golde, Alicia Meyers, starring in one final “Fiddler.”

But it was not an easy decision. There were calls for Tevye and other roles to be filled with Jewish actors. McDonough and director Kenny Moten partnered with the Boulder Jewish Community Center to help ensure the authenticity of the Jewish cultural themes. But there was only one Tevye for this particular production.

And that production was a phenomenon, selling every seat along the way and building to an emotional final performance on Jan. 13, 2024, that started late and stretched into the next morning. Actors, crew, staff and many theatergoers were still singing, dancing, crying and milling about at 2:30 in the morning. All present gathered together in circle on the stage, crying, drinking and singing songs, with Kennedy in the center of it all.

It was a particularly meaningful culmination for Kennedy, who faced major health challenges in the last decade of his life, including a hip replacement and, in the final days of 2022, a serious heart attack. For Kennedy, the physical recovery from his heart surgery was much easier than the mind games that mortality played on him thereafter.

“You live your whole life as an actor with the mindset that you never miss a performance. You are invincible. You never stop, and it’s always go, go, go,” he told me last year. “And then here comes this thing, and all of a sudden something’s broken, and it changes your self-image.”

Facing down death enhanced Kennedy’s performance in “Fiddler.” He seemed to put even more of a finer point on each word he’d been given to say, like a miner digging for nuggets of truth. Kennedy said he hadn’t thought much about that, “but I do know that everything felt much different to me afterward – especially given the age of my kids now,” which is 30 and 26.

Ever the father. The guy whose two favorite pastimes were watching “The West Wing” (20 times through, by Julie’s estimate) and playing golf with his sons.

Meyers has absorbed the news of Kennedy’s death, but processing it is going to take some time. “I’ll be honest – I’m in shock,” she said. “I’ve known this was coming, but I cannot believe he is gone. I cannot believe it. It’s so painful.”

She does have the comfort of memories, and her favorite wasn’t even from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“No, mine was when we were doing another show,” she said. “After the performance, I walk around the corner from the lobby into the bar, and there Wayne is, standing behind my 1-year-old daughter with his arms circling her but not touching her as she’s taking her first steps.”

Meyers had to take a pause in telling her story.

“I am telling you, that man is an angel on this earth,” she said, “and his wings are just so (bleeping) huge, protecting people and guiding people.

“Wayne is a treasure not only to actors and to theater people alike, but to every audience member who was lucky enough to see the whole span of his career.”

One of the most famous songs in “Fiddler on the Roof” has Tevye, who was paired with his beloved wife as a teenage stranger, wondering for the first time, “Do You Love Me?”

On her Facebook page today, Meyers posted a photo of the two, hugging. Her only text:

“Yes, I do.”

Kennedy is survived by his wife, two sons, father and stepmom, LuAnne Kennedy. There will be no traditional burial, but a celebration is being planned.