Dennis Walaker was laid to rest Sunday and the business of Fargo moved forward Monday. The city commission met and discussed the process for electing a mayor to replace Walaker, who died last week.

Same old story: How do you replace a mayor as popular, and right for the city he led, as Walaker? Same old answer: You don’t, but there are several willing to try.

It’s likely at least a couple of the current commission will attempt to be the next mayor. Certainly Tim Mahoney, deputy mayor and Denny’s right-hand person, will throw his vest in the ring. It’s likely Dave Piepkorn, who lobbed a couple of shots across Mahoney’s bow even prior to Walaker’s death, will run. Mike Williams? Don’t bet against him running. If Melissa Sobolik decided to run, which is not entirely outside the realm of possibility, it would be a perfect 4-for-4 among city commissioners.

And then there’s former commissioner Brad Wimmer, the Fargo businessman who ran a doomed campaign against Walaker in June. It’s obvious he wants to be mayor. He might run, too.

One thing is certain no matter who runs, and who eventually wins: That person will have large shoes to fill. It might not be possible to fill them, given Walaker’s seemingly universal popularity among the regular folks who make up the majority of Fargo’s population.

Denny just had that touch. Whether he was tailgating before a Bison football game or proudly announcing a low-income housing initiative, Walaker’s interests laid not with the country-club cliques or the chamber of commerce circles but with those who worked for the people who belonged to the country club and the chamber of commerce.

His two most visible defining moments as mayor showed that.

One came several years ago, when a female teenage driver hit a rut on south University Drive and twirled into oncoming traffic. The crash killed the driver’s young sister. In 99 percent of cases like these, the city would’ve wrangled legally with the family and reached a settlement hammered out by teams of lawyers. Blame would’ve been assigned by percentage and reducing the city’s liability would’ve been priority No. 1.

Not with Walaker as mayor. A father and grandfather, he knew what the proper thing to do was and he did it. He quickly came out publicly and said the city, not the young driver, was 100 percent at fault. He did the right thing and didn’t apologize for it.

The other defining moment, of course, was during the frenetic flood fight of 2009. With the Red River rising and Fargo-Moorhead frantically working to hold off the devastating waters, the National Weather Service made a forecast that seemed to doom North Dakota’s largest city.

Federal officials came to Fargo and urged Walaker and other leaders to evacuate the city. It was the prudent thing to do, they said. They didn’t want another Hurricane Katrina debacle on their hands.

But Denny refused their pressure, saying that if Fargoans abandoned the city we were certain to lose the fight. The only way to win, he said, was to stay and fight.

So stay and fight we did. And we won.

It was a remarkable and gutsy decision that was 100 percent correct. Again, Walaker knew what the right thing to do was and he did it.

“There’s just no way I could tell the people of the city of Fargo, after all the work that they’d done, to evacuate,” Walaker told National Public Radio shortly after the crest in late March 2009.

Fargo will have a new mayor in the coming months. Will that person make decisions based on right and wrong? Will that person have the courage to make the toughest decisions at the most difficult times? Will that person have the guts to stand up strongly for Fargo when many in North Dakota try to tear down the city?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But we know Walaker did. Because of that, he was utterly beloved by a vast majority of his constituents.

The next mayor, no matter who it is, will have a difficult time living up to that standard. Denny, all 6-foot-5 of him, left behind a mighty big pair of shoes.

(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO-AM in Fargo-Moorhead. He can be heard 2-5 p.m. weekdays. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)