David’s Passions

• His family was his ballast,
• His Muscle Cars and his Luxury Cars,
• Enjoying Wine and Oysters,
• Boys night out, dining and attending Piano and Violin concerts,
• Finding Humor in Life and telling funny stories
• Volunteering at the American Helicopter Museum where he made wonderful friends and met interesting people who told him wonderful stories about his father.

 

HIS CARS

When I met him he was driving a 1972 GTO. He loved that car and used to open the hood and tune up the engine and change the oil himself. He kept it through our early married years. He moved on to other model cars as the years passed but later on his passion settled on the BMW 5-series as his all time favorite car. During the 1990’s he somehow convinced his company management to agree to lease the BMW as a company car when only American cars were allowed by the company policy.

DAVID’S PASSION FOR HIS FAMILY

David is extremely proud of Erin and Jason’s achievements in life. Naturally he values their intelligence, cleverness, humor, charm, creativity, and independence which as it turns out were attributes he was also born with. He enjoyed and cherished his time with family and friends.

He cherished the role he played as their business mentor during their early career challenges, guiding them with his own wealth of business experience.  He enjoyed spending countless hours on the phone talking with Erin and Jason discussing each of the various individual career challenges each one faced; hoping his guidance, creative ideas, or thoughtful silence would be exactly what was needed.  David said,” he had a Santa-like ‘bag of business tricks’ honed from many years’ experience that he would share with Erin and Jason as need arose”. Erin and Jason would be given a ‘gift’ from his ‘bag’ to help enhance their own career challenge. Each took their gift and made it their own, using ‘it’ to achieve their own success.  As each celebrated their individual successes, David congratulated them and took pride in their own innate abilities, cleverness and accomplishments.

Even though, Erin and Jason’s career paths were very different the common dominator was business.  And David knew how to succeed in business both in the corporate world and in small business.

His role as mentor to his children continued until the demands of his illness changed his priorities. The lessons that he taught Erin and Jason during their years of his tutorship however will last them a lifetime.

DAVID LOVES SHELLFISH

David had his oystering buddies. During the “R” months of the year, David, Bob Simmons and Peter Mardinly would canvass the various restaurants offering oysters on their menus to find the one restaurant with the best selection of wine and oysters.  They would meet regularly to dine on their favorite delicacy, bonding over oysters and wine which deepened their friendships with shared stories and experiences.

Since most diners came later and noise levels increased, David and friends went early for a quieter ambiance and better oyster selection. Close friendships were developed over the years with both Bob Simmons and Peter Mardinly, two distinctly different personalities from totally different backgrounds, and experiences.  Our families and theirs began our friendships early in the 1970’s with Peter and in the 1980’s with Bob.

DONNA’S SHELLFISH NIGHTMARE

Unfortunately, I developed an allergy to shellfish in 1988 during the Christmas season.  I had never before been allergic to shellfish prior to this time. David and I were out Christmas shopping at King of Prussia and stopped for dinner at a seafood buffet restaurant.  I’ve nicknamed it “Bob’s BigBoy”.  It drew a large crowd of extra-large  people with large appetites!! Every time I managed to squeeze through the crowds to reach the buffet bar, the food buffet was empty. I should have taken that as an omen! But I was hungry, so I waited my turn as the food was replenished, to be first before the ‘hungry heffers’ joined me. I filled my plate with shrimp, crab, scallops etc., and sat down.  After dinner we drove home to relieve the baby sitter.  I started itching around my face and neck on the way home.  David left right away to drive the sitter home a half hour away in Media.  I began getting the kids ready for bed, while my skin was beginning to be covered in hives.

I was putting 6 yr. old Erin to bed and she said, “Mommy are you changing into something”? LOL She could tell that my neck was beginning to swell.  I called the doctor and he said take all the Benadryl in the house.  I only had children’s liquid, so I drank the whole bottle.  The doctor told me to go to the emergency room immediately.  I couldn’t – Dave had the car and who would stay with the kids?  Remember there were no cell phones for me to call David.  So I called my next door neighbor. When Debby came over, I opened the door, and she nearly fainted when she saw me! My entire neck and face were swelled up double normal size. Fortunately David arrived right after her and we rushed to the nearest hospital.  I was pumped full of epinephrine and antihistamines, & corticosteroids and sent home, but was up all night full of adrenaline and afraid to sleep for fear that the symptoms of anaphylaxis would come back.  I was very lucky in getting treatment in time because my throat was closing shut.  I carry an epi-pen now, because shellfish is on every restaurant menu.

I loved shrimp, and crab and miss eating it but not the emergency room consequences. So when David wanted to eat shellfish, he went out with friends for lunch or with his oyster buddies.

MUSIC

Growing up, David had a love-hate relationship with his violin.  He hated taking lessons and dragging his violin to school as a child. His music teacher had the unenviable task of telling his determined mother that her son’s musical talents lay elsewhere.

But as an adult, David loved listening to the talented Isaac Stern’s violin concertos.  However, his favorite musician was Itzhak Perlman and his favorite CD was Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons of Spring.” Vivaldi was played so often in our home that I knew it by heart! David owned all of Itzhak’s CDs including Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major Op35.

Peter Mardinly and David shared a passion for piano and violin music and regularly attended Philadelphia Music Society Concerts.  They would make an evening out in Philadelphia by having dinner and attending PMSC concerts. Peter is a pianist himself and plays beautifully.

While David was ill, I played his favorite violin CD concertos to cheer him up.

HUMOR AND STORIES

Everyone remembers David for his stories and his humor. He loved to
laugh and to see others enjoying his humor too. He used to tease the kids when they were growing up. When they were little they never knew when he was serious or telling them a tale. He always had them guessing. As they grew older they started to catch on to his tricks and he found it harder to get away with his antics. He had to get more creative until they finally just grew up and he felt kinda sad in a way that he’d lost his audience.  But the kids caught on to his teasing and learned some of his humor and returned it much to his delight.

He used his humor to ease tensions during critical business meetings when tempers were flaring. He just had a flare for it! It takes skill and intelligence to know when and how to use humor without getting punched in the face.  However, his humor wasn’t always so easy or smooth.

In 1976, when I met him he had a very biting sarcastic humor that only a very few shared. I wasn’t one of them but the president of his company did fortunately for him. He learned to moderate and tone down and hone his talent for humor. He also polished his skill for business over the years working with a talented sales force, learning the ropes in marketing, sales and sales management working for Sun Data Systems Inc. He developed a lot of humorous war stories from his years working and loved to share them. He learned many lessons from his challenges in business and wanted to share his knowledge with others and used humor often in getting his point across. One of the biggest lessons he learned was how to think-outside-the-box. He never like to follow rules and was very creative in solving business problems, creating and closing business deals. He loved to talk about his bag of “marketing tricks” from his glory days.  And one of his often told stories was from a business time management course he took about “Who’s Got the Monkey?” — how to get the ‘monkey off your back’!  Our grown children know that story by heart and I’m sure use it’s lessons in their own business careers.

When David was working in sales,  he had a large territory he drove from Boston to Virginia! To keep himself entertained he liked to listen to a series of humorous tapes by ” Roy D. Mercer’ !  He used to howl with laughter while driving down the highways.  No matter how ugly some of the customer complaints might get or unpleasant the meetings might go, listening to these tapes were an outlet to lift his mood.  Sometimes we would listen to ‘Roy D. Mercer’  in the car on short weekend vacations. It was hard not to laugh at the country boy humor on those tapes.  Some of those tapes were really hysterical.  David had a broad taste in humor.