De Glassgow lived a big life.

He was a lawman, a rancher, a poker player. He was a seeker of truth and treasure.

He was a storyteller – and boy, did he have great stories.

Most of all, though, he was a family man who was fiercely protective of those he loved.

"He didn't do anything half-way," said his granddaughter, Cassie. "He always said, 'I want to live until I die and not a minute longer.'"

De Glassgow, 76, died early Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, after a brief illness.

But first, he lived.

His story began in Lead, but he grew up in Wall.

De always said he was the smallest kid in his class. "He had to fight his way to town and all the way back," his daughter Diana remembers him saying.

That scrappy nature was a big part of who he was. Not one to back down, he was quick to call people out for unacceptable behavior and slow to take "no" for an answer. If he was told something couldn't be done, "look out."

De joined the Wall Police Department at 20. A few years later, in 1974, friends convinced him to run for Custer County Sheriff. He did, collecting 67 percent of the vote to defeat the 25-year-incumbent.

Custer is where he would meet Nance, his best friend and wife of almost 40 years.

It's also where he would befriend Korczak and Ruth Ziolkowski. He had many stories about Korczak and Crazy Horse Memorial.

De was just 26 when he became sheriff. Six weeks later, he learned that then-Attorney General Bill Janklow planned to try American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Dennis Banks in Custer on riot and assault charges in connections with the 1973 courthouse riots.

"I remember thinking, "If I'd have known that, I wouldn't have run,'" De said once. "Emotions from the local people were still very high."

As it turned out, that trial was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between De and Dennis Banks.

When Banks skipped bail and sought refuge with the Onondaga Nation, De traveled to New York to help negotiate Banks' return, meeting in the Longhouse with the Six Nations' chiefs and clan mothers.

De considered it a highlight of his career.

(One of Nance's most vivid memories is of sitting outside Judge Marshall Young's cabin years later, watching De, Young, Janklow and Banks talk about the 1970s.)

Over time De earned the respect of many native people, partly because he was a good listener. As Pennington County Chief Deputy, a job he took in 1988 that allowed him to work with longtime friend Don Holloway, De often advocated for the Indian community. He worked to improve local race relations and helped bring medicine men into the jail to provide spiritual guidance for inmates.

"I think he took 'serve and protect' very seriously," Cassie said. "I think 'fair' was a big deal to him."

Maybe that's why unsolved cases – particularly a string of Rapid Creek deaths, most of them Indian men, in the late 1990s – continued to haunt him. He remembered every detail of the deaths, which he believed were due in part to foul play.

His dedication to "serve and protect" made for some interesting situations.

Nance remembers when she and De were watching granddaughter Courtney, then just a baby, and De got a work call. Nance sat in the car holding Courtney while De went to look at a dead body.

De's family was his top priority though. De once walked out on a meeting of department heads because he had a more important appointment: picking up his granddaughter from kindergarten.

"He was fiercely protective of his family," Di said. "They came first."

That family included Nance's children Carrie (Jeff) and Will (Hasana) and their children – Emmett, Josie, Matilda and Jude – and, later, Cass's husband, Jon, and Courtney's partner, Emma. Family also included several nieces and nephews De loved and supported. With three sisters and a mother who lived to be 96, De was the one everyone looked to for advice.

"He was a really good problem solver," Courtney said.

De was also a rancher.  He and Nance bought a place in New Underwood, where he thoroughly enjoyed tending livestock, fixing fence and sharing the experience. "There would be 20 of us there to brand 10 calves," Nance said. The couple joked that they both worked full-time to support the ranch.

De and Nance enjoyed riding horses together and rode the entire Centennial Trail. They also loved spending time at their cabin in Boulder Canyon and traveling, especially to Montreal to see their grandchildren there.

De was a poker player, too. Di and Courtney shared his interest and the three spent many hours together in poker rooms. In 2007 De qualified for the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

De was also a history buff. He spent years researching the story of Big Nose George Parrott, who held up a stagecoach and supposedly buried a stash of gold near Newcastle, Wyo., before being caught. De was pretty sure he and Cass had found the location when the landowner invited them not to return.

De's grandchildren could do no wrong in his eyes, and he thoroughly enjoyed spending time with them.

He invented an annual "coming of the light ceremony" for the winter solstice. It involved sage, tobacco ties and being in the woods with a baby tree, meditating on the fact that the days would be getting longer. The temperature might be "negative a billion," but the girls loved it.

De was also a surrogate grandpa to students in Cass's elementary school classroom. They looked forward to seeing "Mr. De" each week. And after he received a cochlear implant two years ago, he could hear the kids read to him. "That was so special," Cass said.

De was special. He knew everyone and remembered everything. He had a gift for making the person he was with feel like they were the only person in the world. He lived big.

There are so many more stories. De's family asks you to come and share yours from 5 to 7 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 2, at Terra Sancta Retreat Center during a celebration of De's life.