An Ode to my Brother Dave: (created 4-21-10, spelling corrections 10-31-10)

My brother, Dave, was something special.

He died the day after he turned 40 years old. But that isn't why he was special. My Dad never got past his early death and he died about 2 years later.

About 4 months before Dave died, my wife, Meegan, and my Mom and Dad were all down visiting him at his house in St. Charles, IL. Dave had taught me so much when I was a kid and inspired me to be so much more than I ever should have been.

Dave was a super smart nerd and his 3 closest friends were super smart nerds. We didn't have any extra money as kids and Dave learned to make everything electronic from scratch. He was always interested in electronics. He got into shortwave radio. He learned Morse code. He hooked up a 100 ft. antennae outside of his bedroom and talked with people all over the world. He build a Tesla coil in 1968 and he had me help. He wrote stories and songs and I doted on them and memorized them. When he built something electronic, he had to build the box out of scrap sheet metal, that's how poor we were. But I never knew we were poor. I thought everyone did that.

He entered the high school science fair every year and always placed and never won. In 1969 he built a little motorized cart with photo sensor eyes that would follow a flash light around in a dark room. Years later, companies were still trying to make solar panels that faithfully tracked the sun.

In 1969 he also built a heat to electricity converter. He built it in a one gallon fish tank, it involved iodine, and it converted even tiny amounts of heat to energy. The science fair judges didn't understand it and he didn't win anything for it. Don't we all wish we had it today. In college I got a degree in chemistry and I can't figure out how he did it.

Dave let me hang out with him and his super smart friends. Dave had a reflecting telescope and would show me Mars and Saturn's rings and the mountains on the Moon. After we were both married and would be able to get together just a few times a year, Dave and I would talk and inspire until the wee hours of the morning. I would be so tired, but wouldn't go to bed until he was all talked out. So on this night shortly before Dave was to die unexpectedly, our Dad was outside with us, it was winter and cold and Dave had set up his telescope and was showing us stuff. Dave blurted out that he had always tried to keep up with me. I asked what he meant by that. I had spent my whole life being impressed with him and trying to keep up with him. He was the smartest person I had ever met. My Dad laughed that we had both spent so much of our lives trying to keep up with each other, but that it was cold and we should all go inside. I only saw Dave one more time before he died. God I miss him.

Bye for now, Doug