Tom Dennison—The Old Gray Wolf Who Ate Omaha

 Regular readers of this website know that I often feature “whiskey men” who have contributed to their communities by public service or philanthropy.  There were dozens of them.  Occasionally, however, the story is about an individual whose activities were so despicable that he deserves attention.  So it is with Tom Dennison, the early 20th Century saloon owner, political boss and crime kingpin of Omaha, Nebraska.  Shown here, he was known by locals as “The Old Gray Wolf.”

Born in Dehli, Iowa, in October 1858 of Irish immigrant parents,  Dennison moved with his family to Nebraska at the age of two.  At 15 he left home and headed to the “Wild” West. Over the next two decades Dennison traveled widely as prospector, gambler, and (some said) bandit.  As he matured he bought and operated gambling and drinking establishments, including the Board of Trade Saloon in Butte, Montana, and the Opera House Saloon in Leadville, Colorado.

Dennison was 34 years old in 1892 when he arrived in Omaha.  By that time highly experienced in “business,” he went there with $75,000 in cash, roughly equivalent to $2.5 million today.   He quickly understood that Omaha, a city of about 140,000, was “wide open” with minimal legal control over liquor, gambling, prostitution, and other nefarious enterprises.  More important, Omaha had no political boss.  His pockets budging with cash, Dennison about 1900 deftly moved into that role.

For the next quarter century, Dennison was the “king” of Omaha politics. He never held public office, instead buying influence through lavish campaign contributions and his ability to get out the vote. Acting as a power broker between the business community and the criminal element, it is said that: “His power was such that no crime occurred in the city without his blessing, the police reported to him daily, and the mayor himself answered directly to him.”

Dennison’s much quoted mantra was: “There are so many laws that people are either law breakers or hypocrites. For my part, I hate a damn hypocrite.”  This attitude, however, apparently did not prevent him from teaming up with local prohibitionists to close down half the saloons in Omaha,  sparing the half in which he had a monetary interest.  Dennison also operated a private bank, loaning money to privileged residents and providing a very private repository for individuals who for various reason avoided traditional banks.

While Dennison was building his criminal empire, he was also having a family life.  In Omaha he met Ida I. Provost. She had been born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the daughter of Charles Provost, a prominent Iowa  newspaper editor and publisher.  When they married in 1893, Dennison was 37, Ida was 26.  Their first child, Frances, lived to maturity.  Twin sons conceived 15 years later were dead at birth.   Amid the family sorrow the couple named them John and Thomas.

The 1919 Omaha Race Riot and Lynching 

The Old Gray Wolf recognized that his operation required controlling City Hall in Omaha.   He installed as mayor a crony named Jim Dahlman, shown here, who had come to Nebraska to escape murder charges for shooting and killing his brother-in-law in Texas. Dahlman, through Dennison’s machinations served eight of nine terms between 1906 and 1930.  The one exception was in 1918 when a reform candidate named Edward Parsons Smith won office promising to “clean up Omaha” and as mayor proceeded to do it.   This led Dennison to his most despicable deed — fomenting the Omaha Race Riot of 1919.

Smith

In an effort to force Smith out of office, Dennison contrived to create a situation that questioned the mayor’s ability to keep order.  With the help of the Omaha Bee newspaper he created false stories of assaults on white women by black men, sometimes using white police officers in blackface.  Each time the Bee blamed Smith’s administration.  Those stories plus the difficult economic situation facing returning World War One veterans created a racial tinderbox in Omaha. 

Then the Old Gray Wolf lit the fuse.  In late September, 1919,  a young white woman was with her crippled companion when a man with a black face beat the man mercilessly and raped the girl.  Police officers in Dennison’s pocket arrested an African-American named Will Brown, who was hapless enough to be near the scene.  He was thrown into the Douglas County Jail located in the County Courthouse.

Over the next several months, through the Bee and other resources, Dennison whipped up public fury against Brown.  On December 28, 1919, a mob led by Dennison’s cronies headed for the courthouse, looking for Brown, as shown above.  The rioters gained access to the building, found Brown, carried him out, hanged him from a lamppost, riddled him with bullets, then took him down and burned his body.

Mayor Smith, endangering his own life, attempted to help Brown.  He was grabbed by the rioters who attempted to hang him as well.  Smith narrowly missed Brown’s fate when  Omaha police detectives intervened in the nick of time to save him from the noose.  Cut down, Smith required hospital treatment and lost his taste for politics, declining to run again. Jim Dahlman, known as “The Perpetual Mayor,” was returned to office, much to Dennison’s delight.

 

Along with Brown two rioters died in the melee and dozens of Omaha police officers and other citizens were injured.  The courthouse was torched.  Some 1,700 federal troops from nearby Fort Omaha and Fort Crook were dispatched to Omaha by the Governor, equipped with cannons and machine guns.  By the next day order had been restored.  In the aftermath not a single rioter was arrested.  Shamelessly, Dennison, while not admitting to his role publicly,  was said to gloat about it when closeted with cronies.

The Old Gray Wolf and National Prohibition

Fast on the heels of the Omaha riot came a new challenge for the Old Gray Wolf when January 1, 1920,  brought National Prohibition. Nebraska ostensibly had gone “dry” earlier. As usual Dennison had an answer.  Early on Dennison created the Omaha Liquor Syndicate to monopolize the bootleg booze traffic in Omaha, creating alliances with Al Capone in Chicago and Tom Pendergast in Kansas City. [See post on Pendergast, Dec. 2, 2013.]

In 1919 Dennison bought a mansion home in an upscale neighborhood of Omaha, shown above.  When Prohibition arrived he arranged for a series of underground tunnels to be built connecting his residence and his downtown offices.  The tunnels are believed to have led to a location where the tracks of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway intersected and freight could be unloaded and carried into town.  As one commentator has noted:  “The unobstructed path to the railroad would have been an ideal way to transport liquor by moonlight.”  As shown here, vestiges of the tunnels still exist in the neighborhood of the former Dennison home.

In 1922 Dennison suddenly sold the house and moved away.  The change may have been linked to the death that year of Ida, his wife of almost 30 years.  Known for her charitable work in Omaha, Ida was a foil for Dennison’s reputation.  At age 54,  after suffering a stroke that left her paralyzed and on the brink of death, she was allowed go home from the hospital and died there with Tom and a daughter at her bedside.  Her visitation at home and funeral at Holy Angels Catholic Church were thronged with mourners.  Burial was at Forest Lawn’s Memorial Park.  Shortly after, Dennison sold their mansion home. Perhaps the house held too many memories.

Ida’s death, however, did not distract Dennison from his criminal enterprises. He was still strongly in control of the city's politics and the Omaha liquor trade.  A survey in 1929 found more than 1,500 outlets in the city illegally selling alcohol, many controlled by  Dennison. The Old Gray Fox also ran Omaha's Flatiron Hotel as a lodging for mobsters running from the law in Kansas City, Chicago and St. Louis.

The End Game in Omaha

In the early 1930s Dennison hold on Omaha weakened.  The unsolved murder of one of his most outspoken opponents shocked the community.  Public opinion began to turn against him.  His hand-picked candidates began losing at the polls.  Dennison’s marriage at 72 years to 17-year-old Neva Jo Truman not only raised eyebrows in Omaha but made him the subject of ribald jokes.  The oddly matched couple is shown below. The marriage lasted just three years before Neva Jo filed for divorce. 

 

As he entered his 70’s, Dennison’s heath began to falter.  In June 1932 he suffered a stroke but recovered quickly.  The following December, however, when a bout of pneumonia nearly killed him, he formally announced retirement.  The Old Gray Wolf was, however, finding that it was not as easy to control federal lawmen as it was Omaha’s.  In August 1932 Dennison and 58 of his cronies were put on trial by federal authorities for violating Prohibition laws.  That trial ended in a hung jury and was declared a mistrial.  Hauled into court again a few month later on conspiracy charges, Dennison and his lackeys were acquitted.

Probably relieved to have escaped justice a second time, Dennison took off for a holiday with friends in Chula Vista, California, in February 1934.  There he was fatally injured in an automobile accident.  Ironically, National Prohibition would end the same year.  His body was returned by train to Omaha for burial.  Suggestive of the hold Dennison still held on Omaha, an estimated 1,000 people attended his funeral at St. Peters Catholic Church.  He was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery next to Ida and the stillborn twins.  While some may have grieved his passing, many others in Omaha celebrated knowing that the Old Gray Wolf was dead at last.

Note:  This post was drawn from two principal sources:  The Wikipedia entry on Dennison and his obituary in the Omaha Bee of February 18, 1934.  By the way, it is just a remarkable coincidence that this article, published on the eve of New Years Day, 2024, would be  #1111 in the series of posts.