Chuck Gilmore was a masterful photographer, sculptor and portrait painter who never raised his voice to anyone. He lavished loving care, including seasonal tomatoes, on the artists who showed at his Denver gallery.

To see his ferocious side, you had to play squash with him.

"On the court," his son, Doug, laughs, "he wasn't even your dad anymore. He was a murderer."

Mr. Gilmore, the longtime proprietor of the Gilmore Art Center, died July 30 at his Lakewood home after a yearlong bout with cancer. He was 86.

Charles Dale Gilmore was born Nov. 14, 1922, in Happyville, near Otis, in Yuma County. After graduating from Otis High School he joined the Navy, where he trained as a welder in a San Diego shipyard. He later parlayed these skills into his work as a metal sculptor, but he probably created his first art at a wartime airfield in New Guinea, painting custom designs on the noses of American bombers for their intrepid crews.

After the war, Mr. Gilmore studied art at Chicago's American Art Academy and the Denver Art Institute and on Dec. 17, 1949, he married a University of Denver coed named JoAnne Hayes, a Denver native.

In 1964, Mr. Gilmore opened his art center at East Sixth Avenue and Downing Street. In its 1970s heyday, he hung exhibitions by painters such as Toby Meyer, Alfred Wands and T.F. Poduska, all of whom became internationally known. Mr. Gilmore's own works - photographs, pastels and oils - were also featured.

The Gilmore Art Center, now at 2119 Curtis St., also houses two other family-owned businesses - a metal fabrication company, Gilmore Manufacturing, that makes to-order doors, railings and staircases and an art-framing studio.

In September 2007, the new gallery launched with a show featuring paintings and sculpture pieces by three generations of Gilmores - Chuck, his son, Doug, and Doug's two children, Josh and Rachel.

A local legend on the squash courts of the YMCA and the Denver Athletic Club, Mr. Gilmore was still crushing opponents at age 84, the year the DAC named him Master Male Athlete of the Year.

As much as he loved squash, he also had a thing for tomatoes.

Gallery manager Steve Candelaria tells how, each winter, Mr. Gilmore would grow tomato plants from seed in his Lakewood greenhouse, then give dozens of them away in the spring to fellow artists, friends and squash buddies.

"They called him the Tomato Man," Candelaria said, "but he obviously had many talents."

"He never said much," his son recalls, "but when he spoke it said volumes. So did his paintings; they were his deepest form of communication."

Services will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at Lakewood Church of Christ, 101 Carr St., Lakewood. Private internment will be at Fort Logan.

Mr. Gilmore's survivors include his wife, JoAnne, of Lakewood; son Doug, of Green Mountain; two daughters, Marsha Henry, of Lakewood, and Corrie Karnan, of Carbondale; five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.