Two boys stood in a quiet Eldersburg family room last July, chanting the Torah portions they had prepared for their bar mitzvahs. Their tutor, Marc “David” Ricklis, was too ill to attend the ceremony, but he insisted on hearing them one last time. Wearing a yarmulke, he whispered the Shema with them and smiled. It was, said Rabbi Sholom Ber Cohen of the Chabad Jewish Center of Carroll County, the final time Ricklis recited the prayer he loved.

Ricklis, of Eldersburg, died on July 11 at 75. He was known for humility, precision and devotion to family, Judaism and community, as well as decades of leadership in Scottish pipe bands.

“David was passionate about the most important things we stand for: his family, his Judaism and love of a fellow Jew,” said Rabbi Nochum Katsenelenbogen, director of Chabad of Owings Mills. “He enjoyed services and holidays, and he was a great asset to the community.”

Born in 1949, Ricklis grew up in the Washington suburbs and attended the former Perry High School in Rockville. Tall and commanding, he was tapped as drum major when the school formed a bagpipe band. “They needed someone tall,” said his wife, Gladys. “He said, ‘Sure, if someone teaches me what I’m supposed to do.’” He went on to lead pipe bands at Scottish Highland games and parades with dignity and authority.

His children remembered trying to break his stern drum-major demeanor during parades.

“We would always try to get him to smile,” daughter Carole Nusbaum said. “Once he did, and it was something special.”

Ricklis attended Montgomery College in Rockville and later joined the family’s wholesale hardware business. He went on to work as a code enforcement officer in Mount Airy before training as a paralegal in Owings Mills. A nine-year Army Reserve veteran, he carried a quiet pride in service.

He later co-commanded the Brotherhood of Kilted Veterans and helped launch a local Celtic festival, handling logistics “down to the T,” Gladys said. “Do it right. Don’t do it over. That was David.”

Jewish life was central to the family. They moved from Pikesville to Eldersburg and helped sustain Carroll County’s small Jewish community. For years, they attended Friday night services at Beth Shalom, a small synagogue in Eldersburg. Later, when Chabad sought to open locally, the Ricklises were founders. “Their enthusiasm brought us out, and they stayed with us in every way,” Rabbi Cohen said. In retirement, when Cohen asked him to help a few boys prepare for their bar mitzvahs, Ricklis volunteered immediately and came every Tuesday until he was too sick to continue.

At home, he was the father who showed up and the husband whose “loving gaze” toward Gladys became an affectionate family joke.

That devotion carried back to the very beginning. Gladys remembered meeting her future husband in a Montgomery College parking lot before a picnic. “By the time we got together for the picnic, I knew then and there I would fall in love with him,” she said. They married, raised three daughters and renewed their vows on a Jerusalem rooftop in 2004. They traveled widely, grew to love cruising and twice visited Israel with family. “He always loved Israel,” Gladys Ricklis said. “He followed everything and defended Israel. We planned to go back after I retired.” Illness cut that plan short.

Rebecca “Becky” Ricklis, his daughter, described him as widely respected yet grounded. “He was very knowledgeable, but he didn’t put on airs,” she said. “He cared about excellence. If something important needed to be said, he would say it — but he was a man of few words. To show honor to our country’s highest office, its veterans and others, my dad directed magnificent performances, and he valued ceremony.” She recalled that “for himself,” he preferred simplicity — “nothing ornate” — and he performed good deeds quietly, often without anyone knowing. Even his bar mitzvah tutoring came to light only when the boys visited him at home hospice during his final days.

He and Gladys nurtured a strong Jewish identity in their children. “He really instilled that in me from when I was very little. I saw that my mom would beam with joy during our Jewish activities together,” Becky Ricklis said. He led Shabbat blessings at the table, drove Becky to Hebrew school and reviewed lessons with her. On Sukkot, he built family sukkahs, first for the household, then also helping her design and assemble her own as an adult. “In neighborhoods where no one else was doing that, he made a point to do it,” she said.
He was also a devoted grandfather, proud to see his grandchildren’s bar and bat mitzvahs and eager for Emma’s, which will now include a tribute to him.

The last months were difficult. After years with a pacemaker and cardiac care, pain in his right shoulder revealed advanced, hard-to-classify cancer that had been missed. He spent weeks at Johns Hopkins before choosing hospice at home, where he wanted to be surrounded by family, his dogs and friends.

In the end, he is remembered for his steadfastness, exactness, kindness and faith, and “for valuing family as the point of life. What was most important to him was to always do the right thing,” Becky Ricklis said.

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.