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Tucson's "demolition man" dealt in historic rubble, ruin and salvage for more than 35 years.

Gerson Demolition and Excavating was contracted to tear down many of the Old Pueblo's buildings, from Downtown landmarks including the Lyric Theater and Steinfeld's Department Store to the Pima County pokey that kept under lock and key everyone from the town drunk to John Dillinger.

But many will remember the gruff and dusty Howard Gerson as much for his sentimentality as for his zeal for demolition.

Gerson, a father of four, died at his Cleveland home on Tuesday of unknown causes. He was 81. Services are pending.

Gerson kept a home in Tucson and made frequent trips to the Southwest, but he moved back to his hometown more than a decade ago after rekindling an acquaintance with a former classmate at their 50th high school reunion, said longtime friend Gloria Jacobs of Tucson.

"If he was your friend, he was your friend forever. He was very loyal," said Jacobs, a friend of the Gerson family for 50 years.

As the son of a Cleveland wrecking company owner, Gerson was on job sites with his father — pulling nails out of boards and cleaning lumber — when he was just a boy.

"I was born into the destruction business," he said in a 1987 Tucson Citizen article. "But I also like to save nice things."

Gerson and his wife, Aileen, began visiting Tucson in 1949, fell in love with the quaint desert town and moved here in 1958.

"Tucson is very much in his heart. He adored the Western lifestyle," Jacobs said.

Gerson worked for the owner of a local demolition company for a few years before striking out on his own in 1961: "I had an old Chevy truck, a wrecking bar, a scoop shovel and a wheelbarrow," he said in a 1996 Arizona Daily Star article.

Soon business was booming. It was a time of urban renewal.

"At least a hundred buildings went down in the barrio. I did a lot of them," Gerson said in the '96 article.

He salvaged building materials after his crew reduced structures to rubble. Some ended up for sale in his salvage yard, Gerson's Used Building Materials, 1811 S. Park Ave. Other odds and ends — iron gates, heavy wooden doors, floorboards and bricks — made their way to the Gerson home.

Demolition was in Gerson's blood, but he occasionally drew the line. In 1960, he was contracted to tear down several homes and the surrounding vegetation on East Sixth Street to make way for expansion of the University of Arizona stadium.

"Here stood this big, beautiful (eucalyptus) tree in front of one of the homes," Gerson said in the 1987 article. "I knew it wasn't going to be in the way of the new construction, and I just couldn't see tearing it down."

After talking with university administrators, they agreed to keep the tree.

He was twice asked to raze the St. Catherine of Alexandria Chapel on the grounds of St. Mary's Hospital. The first time, in 1977, Gerson delayed demolition long enough for supporters to circulate a petition encouraging the hospital to restore rather than destroy the nearly 50-year-old structure.

Two years earlier, Aileen Gerson had spent hour after hour for weeks in the tiny chapel praying for her husband's survival. A then 47-year-old Gerson spent 54 days in the St. Mary's burn unit, charred over 60 percent of his body after natural gas from a broken high-pressure line permeated his garage and burst into flames when Gerson used the automatic overhead door. Two years of surgery and rehabilitation still had failed to restore full function to one of his arms.

In 1991, Gerson again was approached to tear down the by-then-irreparable old chapel. That time he relented after salvaging its cross, bell, wooden doors and beams, and stained glass windows for use in another chapel.

One of Gerson's sons ran the salvage yard until recently, when it was sold.

Gerson had retired in the mid-1990s. Regulators had begun cracking down on environmental concerns, and subcontractors were needed for dust, asbestos and lead-paint abatement.

"I always said when it ceased to be fun, I'd give it up," Gerson said in the '96 article. "My timing was good."