Nurse, scholar, advocate, mentor, drummer, runner, loyal friend, and loving husband, father, son, and brother, Dennis P. Doherty, PhD, RN, NPDA-BC, passed away on Sun., Feb. 12, while battling pancreatic cancer. He was 46.

Dennis was born in Boston, in what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital, just a few short blocks from Children’s, his future proving ground as a professional. He grew up in Dorchester, the first son of Paul Doherty, a union carpenter who worked on the Big Dig and other projects, and Denise Doherty, a typesetter for the Dorchester Reporter and then type studio manager at Boston University. Dennis was joined by a brother, Larry – the two were known to practice pro-wrestling moves on each other in the front room – and a sister, Brigid. The extended Doherty family also included two nurses, who by their example planted the seeds for Dennis’s career aspirations.

But first, he was a kid who was into music. Dennis attended Boston Latin Academy, where he played trombone in the school jazz band and bonded with bandmates while learning and performing jazz standards and listening to and going to see favorite rock acts, from Guns ‘n’ Roses to Letters to Cleo.

“He was energetic, enthusiastic, and knew how to have a good time,” wrote classmate Tom Appleman, a bassist in the BLA jazz band. “There was always a realness about him, and you felt like you could talk about anything to him, regardless of how silly or deep you thought it was.”

Dennis switched from trombone to drums, and, along with Appleman and others, started a hip-hop/funk-rock band called Epileptic Disco. (In the future, as a pediatric nurse, Dennis would cringe when asked about that band name. Still, he said, “We were sixteen.”) As teenagers, the band started playing the Rathskeller and the Middle East, eventually opening for popular local and national ska and rap acts such as the Allstonians, Big D & the Kids Table, Shootyz Groove, and the Lordz of Brooklyn. They even performed their hit, “Larry Bird,” live on Mike Adams’s Sports World on NECN.

Dennis continued with the band throughout his first two years at Northeastern University, where he studied for a bachelor’s in nursing science and met Nancy Reardon, who was studying toxicology. At some point, they fell in love.

Another watershed moment came when, through Northeastern’s co-op program, Dennis was hired as a clinical assistant in the Medical-Surgical Intensive Care Unit (MSICU) at Boston Children’s Hospital. “As a student, I was in awe,” he wrote later. “It seemed to me that the nurses ran the show. I could see that they were independent and had autonomy. The nursing staff was proud and intelligent. I knew that I wanted to be this kind of nurse.”

Dennis graduated from Northeastern in 2000. After a year at Franciscan Children’s in Brighton, he returned to the MSICU at Children’s, this time as a registered nurse. Now he provided direct care to critically ill children, from newborns with rare anomalies to teens with cancer.

“Looking back,” he wrote in 2013 as part of an application for a promotion, “all my best experiences – the patients and families for whom I truly made a difference – the key was being myself. . . . Being able to talk about the Patriots with a teenage boy who had a spinal cord injury was as important in his recovery as his surgical interventions were in his healing. Giving my iPod to a patient’s father for the night after talking about bootleg Grateful Dead tapes provided some normalcy for a man who listened to music daily. Cutting up scrubs to make a stocking cap for myself and a patient’s grandmother provided laughter to a twelve-year-old girl on [a ventilator].”

Dennis also joined the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), which had started advocating for healthy work environments in hospitals. Dennis brought this initiative to Children’s, surveying his colleagues and bringing the results to management.

“I spent a lot of my 10 years as a staff nurse in the MSICU opening my mouth,” Dennis wrote. When his colleagues complained about the way vacation days were allocated, Dennis took action. “I remember barging into our nursing director’s office, outraged, yelling about how things had to change. This did not help my cause.”

Meanwhile, Dennis and Nancy bought a home in Hyde Park and were married in 2006. They had their first son, Patrick, in 2008; moved to Norwood; and had a second son, Daniel, in 2012.

But even as he began notching personal and professional milestones, Dennis didn’t leave music behind. In an especially active period from 2005 to 2008, he played drums in the Larkin Brigade, an Irish pub rock band that was nominated for a Boston Music Award. Another outlet for Dennis was long-distance running. The first time he plodded around the Fens as a husky Northeastern student, he vomited afterwards. But within a few years, he was running half marathons, and in 2012, he announced he was running the Boston Marathon to raise funds for the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism.

It was only then that most of the Dohertys’ friends learned that young Patrick had been diagnosed as autistic. “I don’t know why it is so hard to discuss this, but I avoided it,” Dennis later told music journalist Michael O’Connor Marotta. For four years, “People would ask, ‘How’s your son?’ and I would be like ‘Oh great!’ But I would feel sick to my stomach.”

That changed when Dennis made his marathon announcement. “It has been difficult,” he wrote on his Flutie Foundation fundraising page. “On the one hand, we have the sweetest, most loving, beautiful little boy. On the other hand, it is hard not to wonder why this had to happen to Patrick.” Why was he born into a world that wouldn’t fully support his needs as a disabled person? With three- to five-hour therapy sessions five days a week, he added, Patrick was making gains in his speech, cognition, and behavior. But Dennis was afraid that Patrick wouldn’t be understood or accepted by society at large.

A burden was lifted as friends rallied behind Dennis and his family. Donations and words of support poured in, online and at the fundraisers Dennis threw at the Beachcomber in Quincy and other venues. Folks donned “Team Doherty” T-shirts and joined him on training runs over the Newton hills.
“The whole process [was] cathartic,” Dennis told Marotta. It “helped me work past this sort of self-pity and realize that I have an amazing son who is quirky, but also funny and sweet and happy. He makes me better at all parts of life.”

Dennis signed up to run the marathon once more in 2014, throwing himself into training and fundraising all over again, including with a Larkin Brigade reunion at TT the Bear’s. But this time, on Patriots’ Day, he crossed the finish line.

The following month, he completed his master’s degree in nursing and nursing education from Framingham State University. That summer, he started a new job at Children’s as a professional development specialist. He managed nursing orientation, the healthy work environment program, the mentorship program, and other facets of staff empowerment, which was his passion. And in 2021, he earned a PhD in nursing science from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

For Dennis, the social aspect of all these activities over the years was key. By inviting peeps to a concert—or a Patriots or Boston College football game, or a Northeastern hockey game—he was nudging friends out of their middle-age rut and continuing to make memories.

“Dennis had the rare ability to balance work, family, and friendship at a time of life when far too many of us sacrifice at least one of those things,” said longtime friend Mike Miller.

Then the whirlwind wound down. Dennis was admitted to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in early February, missing Northeastern’s 2023 Beanpot win by one day.

“Most of all,” said Nancy, “Dennis loved the [stuffing] out of me and the kids. In his drugged-up stupor, from his hospital bed, he managed to send the boys and me cupcakes for Valentine’s Day.”

In addition to Nancy, Patrick, Daniel, Paul, Denise, Larry and his wife, Meghan, and Brigid and her husband, Mike, Dennis leaves nieces and nephews Ben, Shannon, Jennifer, and Liam, along with cousins, aunts, and uncles, and countless friends and colleagues.

Services from the Gillooly Funeral Home in Norwood were held privately. A Memorial Service will be held at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center Amphitheater, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA on Sat., March 11, at 11 a.m. Complimentary parking will be available in the parking garage under the venue.  In lieu of flowers, the Dohertys ask that donations be made to The Boston Bear Cubs, a Massachusetts Special Hockey Affiliate for which Patrick plays and Dennis was a coach. Donate at paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/1496345.