David Andrews

A Life Well-Lived

David Andrews fulfilled his own prophecy on May 14, 2024. Because on that Tuesday afternoon, he departed life a happy man. A fact he had predicting for years – regularly assuring friends and family that he was deeply fulfilled by the life he had lived so far. Nothing more was required.

Adventure Calls

Dave was born July 3, 1955 during one of America’s most optimistic eras. It was the year that a song about folk hero Davy Crockett (“King of the Wild Frontier") blasted the country’s airwaves. The song was ubiquitous, riding a fad that swept the country, a fad that preceded even the Hula Hoop. Upon meeting baby Dave, adults would often croon a chorus of “Davy Crockett” to him. The song might have been a harbinger for the baby’s life to come. There would be plenty of adventure. And like the frontiers- man, Dave brought an adventurous nature, boundless curiosity and a tender heart to the canvas of his life.

Go West, Young Man

Indeed, adventure – often unsought – was the fabric of his childhood. Thanks to a peripatetic mother, Dave and his sister Margo lived in five states and attended numerous schools well before reaching junior high. At the ripe age of 17, Dave decided to join the Navy and see the world. And so he did – visiting numerous exotic ports and serving for years on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise as a jet mechanic. After his Navy years, Dave returned to family in the North Carolina mountains. But it was a short-lived version of home. Seemingly mesmerized by the siren song of the Rockies, David headed west for Denver. His timing was good. Waiting just ahead was what he would often call “the luckiest day of my life.”

Love-Struck

According to Dave there was no contest. The luckiest day of his life, no – he would say the making of his life came on a sunny afternoon in August 1977. That day, from the window of his Denver apartment building something drew his eye. In the parking lot he caught sight of a beautiful young woman with flashing dark eyes, swinging brown hair and plenty of sass. “Were you just going to stand there and watch me carry my groceries in?” she demanded when he approached. That would have been Susan, the woman who became his wife and the mother of his two children: son, Daniel and daughter, Mallory. In March 2024 Dave and Sue celebrated their 45th anniversary – and a life of enviable stability, having moved essentially once in that long parade of years. The girl he met that day filled up his senses…and ultimately his life.

Our Renaissance Man

The standard definition of a Renaissance Man is a person who is knowledgeable, educated or proficient in a wide range of fields. For the most part, this is an understatement in terms of David’s creative expressiveness and the scope of his 
acquired brilliance.

First, he was an artist. As a youth, he sketched his way through every class that bored him, building perceptive skill. He began sculpting as a young man, creating fluid and beautifully balanced pieces. Dave’s love of the sea inspired many of his early sculptures, like The Octopus. Gradually he began to miniaturize some of his sculptures, eventually designing and crafting a full collection of gold and silver artisanal jewelry, which he sold through his business, The Reef Gallery. He also explored his growing interest in miniaturization by teaching himself the almost-lost art of scrimshaw.

 In his spare time, Dave filled his much-loved home with pictural wall hangings of dimensional metal. His love of metals and all metalcraft may have inspired his son, Daniel, to attend Colorado School of Mines and become a metallurgical engineer.

For years, David’s “day job” was his delivery business; his clients were some of the finest interior designers in metro Denver. Inspired by the furnishings he transported, Dave began “riffing” on these creations, analyzing construction materials, balance and design, then filling his home with his handmade artisanal furniture.

David was expert enough at fine masonry to have been offered a job by the Denver Museum of Natural History. He demonstrated his streak of stalwart independence by turning down the job and then proceeding to glorify his own outdoor space with tiered rock gardens and a stunning stone pond.

A Man of Science

David was always fascinated by science – particularly, geology, astronomy and physics. He spent years reading voraciously in these fields, watching talks and discussing when he could. Everyone in his extended family had more formal education than he, but he could think circles around us all. Listening to him unveil a set of facts that had recently caught his attention was dazzling. We thought of him as an amateur astrophysicist.

The Park Ranger

In September 2019, Dave and Sue visited Yellowstone Park. One highlight of that trip was a planned stop at Old Faithful, the famous geyser that people from all over the world journey to see. What especially fascinated David was the geologic forces behind geysers. As he and Sue waited for the next eruption, Dave began gesturing to the surrounding hills and explaining how it was the existing landscape made Old Faithful possible.

It seems that the hills around the geyser basin were reminders of the ancient Quaternary rhyolitic lava flows which once poured across the land like stiff mounds of bread dough. Warming to his topic, Dave explained that these deposits of thick glacial till beneath geyser basins create channels, providing storage for the water used in eruptions. As he spoke, something began to happen. At first, it was just a person or two, edging closer and then closer.

Finally, a large group of mostly Japanese tourists surrounded him as he held forth.

Apparently assuming Dave was a park ranger, they listened raptly. He even took a round of questions from the group!

The Fixer

It must be said, that in our family Dave was The Fixer. Period. A natural-born engineer, he accepted every broken thing, every non-functioning device, every mystery, every puzzle with amiable goodwill and fierce curiosity. You could hand him anything that needed attention, and immediatey his hands became ceaseless. Figuring it out.

Saving the Day. In 2018 David’s daughter Mallory and her husband Mike were married in Jamaica. Held at a resort in Montego Bay, the day of the wedding dawned fragrant and warm, yet catastrophe loomed like a storm cloud. The morning of the wedding found Mallory and Emily (her bridesmaid) rushing from resort shop to pavilion, desperate for help. Emily’s grandmother’s gold ring had become stuck on her finger and she was in agony. Increasingly panicked (the wedding was in hours), Mallory texted her dad. Heroically rising from his own breakfast table, Dave let his family know that duty called…and strode off. Borrowing a tool from a resort jeweler who seemed mystified by it, the deed was done. Almost weeping with gratitude, Emily was separated from her ring.

Six months later, Dave returned the ring to Emily, repaired, resized, but with a little niche left in it…for remembrance, he said. Emily says she will never, ever forget Dave. We all smile and say, “Join the crowd.”

Both Sides Now

I. Fierce Independence

One of the qualities Dave possessed in spades was a fierce independence. Throughout his life he remained rather averse to many of the trappings of civilization, including visits to most doctors as well as polite driving (can you say ‘restraining order?’) As a young man, probably between cars, David hitchhiked across the country and back twice to see his mother.

An inventive prankster, he would often lurk in dark pre-planned spots, awaiting his prey. When the designated human appeared he would leap out at them explosively and with boyish glee. He had different versions of SUR-PRISE! in his repertoire. Another prank involved a sneaky string of firecrackers with a delayed fuse and an annoying neighbor. And it takes a certain kind of person who, after an accident in his workshop, calmly stitches up his own face. All said, while Dave was an advanced user of 21st century technologies, he remained nearly as self-sufficient as a 19th century frontiersman.

II. Peace Like a River

Like many before him, Dave found a deeper sort of mellowness as he aged. He seemed able to focus with clarity on all the things that brought him closer to life’s goodness. One of the things that purely delighted him was being a grandfather. Self-christened “Pappy,” (as his own grandfather had been called), he loved spending time with Kennedy Sue (12) and Kaylee Jayne (11) and dreamed of some day teaching them happy bits of science by narrating videos for them. Another lifelong love of Dave’s was the ocean. In his younger years, he was mesmerized by the idea of becoming part of the sea and, over time, racked up nearly 200 dives. Many of his works of art and jewelry had a nautical theme, as did his well-loved bar.

Finally, over his last years something else was added – a kind of living gratitude for his life. It was monk-like in that it was both conscious and, well, there. He walked with it every day.

The rambunctious young man had evolved into a man of deep presence, consciously grateful for his life exactly as it was.

Creative Community

The Laser Forum

One of Dave’s enduring passions, the Glowforge is a laser engraver that can cut and engrave materials like wood, glass, leather and fabric. It carves out designs using a beam of light as thin as a human hair. All of the creative possibilities endlessly fascinated him.

For the past nine years he was active on a forum for laser owners. In his online profile he says: “I dreamed about doing art with a laser for 35 years, and Glowforge made that happen.”

Dave continues: “Yeah, I bought this thing for purely self-indulgent reasons. It had been on my wishlist since I first saw the amazing detail possible with laser engraving back in the ‘80s.

Back then, I had gotten certified and was engaged with producing a line of gold and silver jewelry for SCUBA enthusiasts to satisfy my love of metalcraft.

Although it was high-end, it was still just selling trinkets, and I lost my enthusiasm.

My daughter and her friends told me I could sell laser stuff on Etsy, and it turned my stomach. I did do some large orders of double-sided tokens for a couple of cafes which paid ok, but I hated it.

The laser is for me to express an aspect of my creative desires, not for scratching around trying to cultivate an income stream.

I am currently trying to change my behavior of saving everything possible for retirement to ‘It’s time to start spending that’, and it’s harder to reprogram than I ever imagined. I do not need to spend any more life-minutes gathering.”

Upon announcing Dave’s passing on the Glowforge Laser Forum, his inbox flooded with responses that called him a bedrock of this community of creators. The group used words like patient, inspiring, generous, funny and smart.

One of simplest condolence posts was likely the one Dave would have hoped for as an epithet: “He was a good man.”

In recent years, we believe endings were much with Dave…but he kept it casual: “When the day comes, don’t cry for me,” he would often say in passing. “I’ve had a better life than I could have ever imagined.”

Quotes Dave Loved

David carried powerfully expressed thoughts with him like treasure. A few favorites:

“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”

                                                          —Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“I yam what I yam."     

                                                           —Popeye

“There are as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a 
little universe.”

                                                          —Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos

“He was not bone and feather, but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.”

                                                           —Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“For what is evil but good, tortured by its own hunger and thirst?”

                                                             —Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

                                                          —Carl Sagan, Cosmos