Richard Wilson saw life as a dance — a way to socially interact with others, express joy and celebrate community.

Wilson's last danceended Thursday morning when he passed away at his home in Glorieta, surrounded by his wife, five daughters and other family members. He was 63.

"He had a real gentle spirit and a sweetness to him, a generosity of heart that a lot of people don't seem to have," said his wife of 30 years, Karolyn Wilson.

Richard Wilson was perhaps best known for both being the postmaster in Glorieta — a post he held for nearly 20 years — and for helping establish and lead a community of dance through the New Mexico Folk Music and Dance Society, which hosts the contra dances that take place every other week at Odd Fellows Hall on Cerrillos Road.

He was born on Christmas Eve 1947 in Los Angeles. His father ran a malt shop where Richard worked, and while he would recall hearing the songs of 1950s and '60s pop artists on the malt-shop jukebox and dancing at local sock-hops, he later said the rhythm didn't quite grab him at that point.

"I may have learned to dance there, but to this day, I have never been able to access anything but the slobbery kissing, and the swing and bebop moves never seemed natural when I tried them later," he wrote in an online autobiography credited to him and Erik Barry Erhardt.

He served a tour with the Army in Vietnam in 1969-1970, earning an honorable discharge and a Bronze Star and later noting, "Anyone who has actually been in a battle normally does not come out unscathed. In fact, if you're anywhere near (battle) you are generally scarred for life."

He then traveled across Africa, Asia, Australia and North America — often by bike — before ending up in El Rito, N.M. He bounced back and forth between California and New Mexico for the next two decades before settling in Glorieta in the early 1990s.

Contra dancing (a popular folk dance with roots traced back to 17th-century English/French country dances) caught Wilson's attention in Los Angeles, where he first encountered Karolyn.

"I was just starting to get into dance," she recalled. "I took a dance class at Santa Monica Community College; he came to help the teacher out and that's how I met him."

In Santa Fe, Richard Wilson was known as a dancer, teacher and caller of dances. His motto when it came to the dances, according to those who knew him, was, "Don't be afraid to fail."

"He loved that choreography that would create chance interactions of a certain quality," friend and fellow dancer/caller Will McDonald recalled. "He tried to heighten the quality of that interaction as people danced and he saw that as heightening the quality of interaction of people in their everyday life."

Contra dancer Barbara Seeley said of Wilson, "Whenever he danced he was in a blissful state. He always had a smile and was always in the moment and loving the eye contact; loving the person he was with in that moment fully. It always made the partner feel safe and fully appreciated."

Of his work as a postmaster, Richard Wilson wrote online, "No employees and never hear from your boss — 20 years of good time behind the bars."

He was also a beekeeper. Friend and fellow beekeeper Carl Hartman said Wilson took a humane approach toward the buzzing busybodies.

"I think he enjoyed them almost as part of the family," Hartman said. "He was sensitive to the moods of the bees and could work with them very comfortably."

In the spring of 2005, Wilson was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, which he succumbed to Thursday. Friends said he never complained.

"He always embraced whatever happened with a real positive energy," Karolyn said.

He was a poet, too, his wife said: "I have a million scraps of paper with poetry on them. His dances were like poetry."

Besides his wife, Wilson is survived by his daughters, Emily, Karina, Lily, Laurel and Charline; three grandchildren, a sister, a brother and his mother.

A memorial service and dance will be planned sometime soon, Karolyn Wilson said. Memorial donations may be made in his name to www.folkmads.org or to the National Institutes of Health's melanoma research program.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.