Davis Philip Stone was born on 12 December 1925 at the home of his maternal grandfather, Oscar Ehmann, a duplex at 2128 Valentine Avenue in the Bronx, New York City. He was the second of two children born to Philip and Loretta (Ehmann) Stone and was named after his father and his father's brother, Davis Handy Stone. His mother's parents were both the children of German immigrants to the New York City area; his father's side was at least half-German in origin as well, excepting the Stones, whose purported immigrant ancestor, Deacon Simon Stone, sailed from England to Massachusetts in 1635. [J. Gardner Bartlett, Simon Stone Genealogy: Ancestry and Descendants of Deacon Simon Stone of Watertown, Mass. 1320-1926 (Stone Family Association, Boston, 1926)]
Dave's father came from a humble Western Massachusetts farming background and at the time Dave was born his father was working as a "keeper" (prison guard) for the New York City Dept. of Correction and lived with his family in New Hampton (Orange County), New York near the New Hampton men's reformatory known as Hampton Farms. By 1932 the family had moved to rural Greycourt, New York, near the village of Chester, where his father then worked as a guard at the Greycourt women's farm colony. Dave's parents separated when he was a boy and his mother moved with the children into Chester and found work on factory assembly lines. At the age of 16, Dave was working at the Goshen Theatre in Goshen (about six miles from his home at 18 Academy Avenue in Chester) when he applied for his Social Security number. His closest friend was John Durland, a neighbor on Academy Ave.
Dave graduated with the Chester High School wartime class of 1943. He played on the high school ball team (had a fingersnap he could put into his pitches that confounded the opposition until they figured it out), and played the trumpet in the Chester town marching band. He later taught himself to play the clarinet and the mandolin. He had an ear and a talent for music and liked both classical and popular; his favorite bandleaders were Benny Goodman and Harry James. His first full-time job after graduating from high school was working as an "ink tracer" drawing highway maps on vellum for the Orange County Highway Department in the county offices at Goshen, New York. But that lasted only five months until he received Uncle Sam's call.
Dave, age 18, was drafted into the Army "for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law." On 22 February 1944 he was enlisted as a private at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. He was sent for basic training to Fort Belvoir, Virginia with the Army Corps of Engineers. While there he was diagnosed with scarlet fever and chronic tonsillitis, was in the hospital from March to May 1944, and had his tonsils removed in typical rough Army fashion. After boot camp he completed 12 weeks of training to be a low-speed radio operator at the Engineering School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. But when the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945 and the war ended, Dave was sent to Camp John T. Knight in Oakland, California to work as a supply sergeant, checking in men and equipment returning home from the Pacific Theater.
By December 1945 he had been sent to Fort Jackson near Columbia, South Carolina (buddies there included Benny Malamud, Bob Corrigan, Bob Trout, and Ray Lott.) He was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant from Company B of the 791st Military Police Battalion on 30 May 1946 at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. At discharge he was described as having blue eyes, brown hair, a height of 5 feet 9-1/2 inches, and weighing 165 pounds. What the Army did not note but what those who knew him learned was that he was intellectually curious, upright, honest, unpretentious, driven to make something of himself, and had a dry wit and a droll sense of humor.
He would later tell the story of how he narrowly missed dismemberment and death one afternoon early in his hitch when his buddies ("I should've been over there with them," he said) were "screwing around" with some explosives or grenades or something on a practice range and blew themselves up. At least one man was killed. Dave was hidden around some corner nearby with his nose stuck in a book when it happened. "Typical," as he put it, "and it probably saved my life."
After leaving the Army Dave got a job on the night-time cleaning crew at the Borden Dairy Company's affiliate, the Washingtonville Creamery, in Washingtonville, New York. This job lasted only a few months until Dave took advantage of the GI Bill and entered two-year Sampson College on the east side of Seneca Lake near Geneva, New York, a newly-formed ACUNY campus housed at the barracks of the former WWII Sampson Naval training base. He completed two years of Pre-Engineering study toward a BSME (Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering), 1947-48. He followed this with a third year toward his BSME at Syracuse University, 1948-49. Then his GI Bill money ran out and Dave found himself overwhelmed by the lack of funds and poor grades in his heavy load of classes. He left college (he would always regret not having attained his college degree) and found a temporary summer job driving a water tank truck for the Davey Tree Company which ended in October 1949.
To support himself Dave next landed a job as a stockboy at the Lincoln Store, a big, multi-story department store located at 221 South Salina Street in the heart of downtown Syracuse, where he soon met the love of his life, Elleanor Lipke, a young fellow employee working in the payroll department. They were married in 1950 and would have four daughters. Dave also opened his home to his mother, who retired and went to live with his family for nearly 20 years. With the help of his in-laws and their extended network of neighbors, coworkers, and friends, Dave and his wife built their first home on Taft Road in North Syracuse with their own hands, using a prefab house kit bought and shipped by train from the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan for $4,720.40.
Dave's father-in-law not only became a loving and supportive surrogate father to him, but also helped him get a job at the Crouse-Hinds Company at 7th and Wolf Streets in Syracuse (a world-renowned manufacturer of industrial lighting fixtures, traffic signals, and beacons). Dave would work there for 17 years (1950-1967), starting as a turret-lathe and chucker operator, then as a screw machine operator on the night shift (1952-1958), and ending with almost nine years as a Quality Control Engineer. He was also the Shop Mathematics Instructor (accredited by The University of New York State) for the Apprentice Training Program and, in the summer of 1962, he played on the Crouse-Hinds team in Syracuse's industrial softball league. During these 17 years Dave furthered his own education by working nights and weekends, completing more courses: The RCA Institute Radio-TV Electronics Home Study Course (1958); Basic and Advanced Industrial Statistics Courses in the New York Adult Education Program (1961); Basic Electronics offered by New York Adult Education (1962); the Quality Assurance Management Course sponsored by ASQC (1964); and the Cleveland Institute of Electronics correspondence course (1966).
For fun he built furniture, including cabinets, bookshelves, toys, a rocking horse, a kids' circular picnic table, and a kids' playhouse (his wife did the painting and finishing). He created a Heathkit stereo hi-fi for the family's living room, and a Heathkit radio for the kitchen, including handcrafted wooden cases. He became a lifelong fix-it/handy man, a man with tools and a workbench who could design, build or repair anything: woodworking, bricklaying, plumbing, electrical wiring, or circuitry. He had a jigsaw and an oscilloscope, a soldering iron and a vacuum tube tester. He could mix up, pour and smooth concrete, or design and produce with his own hands an electrical circuit or a backyard ice skating rink for the kids. He was a hard worker, willing to try and learn any new skill.
Dave was a natural-born philosopher and a man of wit and knowledge who was always studying or reading, for the sheer enjoyment of solving math puzzles, contemplating scientific facts, or just learning and furthering himself. In the basement he worked under fluorescent lights, with sharpened pencils and graph paper at his workbench, surrounded by the smell of sawdust--when he wasn't practicing swing or Dixieland solos on his trumpet or clarinet, or watching cartoons, playing badminton or chess with his daughters, or mowing the lawn or shoveling snow. He took his family on excursions to Wescott Beach, the Burnet Park Zoo, the Catskill Game Park, the Corning Glass Works, Salmon River Falls and the Suburban Park amusement park in the summers, and to the New York State Fair. Because Dave worked at Crouse-Hinds his daughters could attend the annual Crouse-Hinds Children's Christmas Parties at the magnificent Loew's Theater on Salina Street in downtown Syracuse each December.
In February 1967, after two previous summer vacations there, the family packed up a U-Haul truck, hit Route 66, and relocated themselves to Southern California, where a booming economy and better job opportunities beckoned. Dave was a courageous 42 years old, with no home or job awaiting him, only the prospects of a better future for himself and his children. He soon landed a provisional job as Machine Department Foreman at Wen-Mac Corporation in Culver City, a manufacturer of engines for model airplanes. Dave next found the challenging job he wanted: Product Engineer and Quality Control Engineer at the western office of Sprague Electric Company of North Adams, Massachusetts (12870 Panama Street, Los Angeles; July 1967-May 1971). Sprague would become most famous as the firm that manufactured the silicon disc of microscopic messages from Earth left on the moon in 1969. After renting for a year at 19809 Keaton Street in the "Sky Blue" subdivision on the hill in beautiful Saugus/Canyon Country near Newhall, California, the family bought a home in the new "American Beauty" tract off Soledad Canyon Road and moved into 20426 Delight Street in 1968.
Dave established himself as an electronics designer/engineer working for a series of companies for 23 years in California. He specialized in designing electronic filters for new products and worked with both government and private industry clients. In June 1971 he moved to Hopkins Engineering Company, 12900 Foothill Boulevard in San Fernando, where he became Vice President of Engineering (June 1971-December 1984). His final position was with Spectrum Control, Inc., 28106 Avenue Crocker, Valencia, California as Product Engineering Manager (1985-1990), where his duties included department management (supervision of staff of eight workers) and new product design. He was a member of the IEEE Society and past Chairman of EIA Filter Manufacturers' Technical Engineering Committee. He also authored technical articles and obtained a U.S. patent for a special electrical powerline module.
In July 1978 Dave traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii with coworkers on a business trip. His passport application filed around that time described him as 6 feet 1 inch tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
In his private life, Dave and his wife spent 39 years together, working side-by-side indoors and out, and devoting themselves to raising their four daughters. They also gave a loving home to innumerable stray cats, sponsored several impoverished children around the world through World Vision International, and, in the early 1950's and again in the early 1970's, took a series of foster babies into their home and their hearts. Dave was a support to his mother, his in-laws and other relatives and countless other people whom his life touched.
When personal home computers became available in the 1980's Dave instructed himself in their use starting with a 16K RAM Kaypro, graduating to a 64K RAM Osborne with two floppy drives, then a 640K RAM Toshiba T-1100, and finally treating himself to the wonders of his beloved Toshiba 5100 laptop (2 megabyte RAM with an EGA gas-plasma screen). He taught himself to hardwire together various printer/systems interfaces and mastered a library of software, including WordStar, MathCad, BASIC, and QuickBASIC. He wrote original programs in BASIC, including a program for AC circuit analysis and an original database program he named Datamation. When not working at his computer or at his job, he loved hanging out with family, swimming in the backyard pool, playing tennis, jogging, and driving under the blue California skies.
In November 1989 Dave, otherwise healthy, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He fought it with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy for 11 months. He died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, 7 October 1990 at the age of 64. Following a private memorial service for the family on Thursday, 11 October 1990, his ashes were buried the next day at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.
His oldest and youngest daughters were both pregnant with their first children when Dave died. Dave's first two grandchildren were born on the same day, a few months later. Dave is survived by 11 grandchildren in all.
O stricken hearts, remember,
O remember
How of human days he lived the better part.
--Robert Louis Stevenson
Dave's father came from a humble Western Massachusetts farming background and at the time Dave was born his father was working as a "keeper" (prison guard) for the New York City Dept. of Correction and lived with his family in New Hampton (Orange County), New York near the New Hampton men's reformatory known as Hampton Farms. By 1932 the family had moved to rural Greycourt, New York, near the village of Chester, where his father then worked as a guard at the Greycourt women's farm colony. Dave's parents separated when he was a boy and his mother moved with the children into Chester and found work on factory assembly lines. At the age of 16, Dave was working at the Goshen Theatre in Goshen (about six miles from his home at 18 Academy Avenue in Chester) when he applied for his Social Security number. His closest friend was John Durland, a neighbor on Academy Ave.
Dave graduated with the Chester High School wartime class of 1943. He played on the high school ball team (had a fingersnap he could put into his pitches that confounded the opposition until they figured it out), and played the trumpet in the Chester town marching band. He later taught himself to play the clarinet and the mandolin. He had an ear and a talent for music and liked both classical and popular; his favorite bandleaders were Benny Goodman and Harry James. His first full-time job after graduating from high school was working as an "ink tracer" drawing highway maps on vellum for the Orange County Highway Department in the county offices at Goshen, New York. But that lasted only five months until he received Uncle Sam's call.
Dave, age 18, was drafted into the Army "for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law." On 22 February 1944 he was enlisted as a private at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. He was sent for basic training to Fort Belvoir, Virginia with the Army Corps of Engineers. While there he was diagnosed with scarlet fever and chronic tonsillitis, was in the hospital from March to May 1944, and had his tonsils removed in typical rough Army fashion. After boot camp he completed 12 weeks of training to be a low-speed radio operator at the Engineering School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. But when the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945 and the war ended, Dave was sent to Camp John T. Knight in Oakland, California to work as a supply sergeant, checking in men and equipment returning home from the Pacific Theater.
By December 1945 he had been sent to Fort Jackson near Columbia, South Carolina (buddies there included Benny Malamud, Bob Corrigan, Bob Trout, and Ray Lott.) He was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant from Company B of the 791st Military Police Battalion on 30 May 1946 at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. At discharge he was described as having blue eyes, brown hair, a height of 5 feet 9-1/2 inches, and weighing 165 pounds. What the Army did not note but what those who knew him learned was that he was intellectually curious, upright, honest, unpretentious, driven to make something of himself, and had a dry wit and a droll sense of humor.
He would later tell the story of how he narrowly missed dismemberment and death one afternoon early in his hitch when his buddies ("I should've been over there with them," he said) were "screwing around" with some explosives or grenades or something on a practice range and blew themselves up. At least one man was killed. Dave was hidden around some corner nearby with his nose stuck in a book when it happened. "Typical," as he put it, "and it probably saved my life."
After leaving the Army Dave got a job on the night-time cleaning crew at the Borden Dairy Company's affiliate, the Washingtonville Creamery, in Washingtonville, New York. This job lasted only a few months until Dave took advantage of the GI Bill and entered two-year Sampson College on the east side of Seneca Lake near Geneva, New York, a newly-formed ACUNY campus housed at the barracks of the former WWII Sampson Naval training base. He completed two years of Pre-Engineering study toward a BSME (Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering), 1947-48. He followed this with a third year toward his BSME at Syracuse University, 1948-49. Then his GI Bill money ran out and Dave found himself overwhelmed by the lack of funds and poor grades in his heavy load of classes. He left college (he would always regret not having attained his college degree) and found a temporary summer job driving a water tank truck for the Davey Tree Company which ended in October 1949.
To support himself Dave next landed a job as a stockboy at the Lincoln Store, a big, multi-story department store located at 221 South Salina Street in the heart of downtown Syracuse, where he soon met the love of his life, Elleanor Lipke, a young fellow employee working in the payroll department. They were married in 1950 and would have four daughters. Dave also opened his home to his mother, who retired and went to live with his family for nearly 20 years. With the help of his in-laws and their extended network of neighbors, coworkers, and friends, Dave and his wife built their first home on Taft Road in North Syracuse with their own hands, using a prefab house kit bought and shipped by train from the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan for $4,720.40.
Dave's father-in-law not only became a loving and supportive surrogate father to him, but also helped him get a job at the Crouse-Hinds Company at 7th and Wolf Streets in Syracuse (a world-renowned manufacturer of industrial lighting fixtures, traffic signals, and beacons). Dave would work there for 17 years (1950-1967), starting as a turret-lathe and chucker operator, then as a screw machine operator on the night shift (1952-1958), and ending with almost nine years as a Quality Control Engineer. He was also the Shop Mathematics Instructor (accredited by The University of New York State) for the Apprentice Training Program and, in the summer of 1962, he played on the Crouse-Hinds team in Syracuse's industrial softball league. During these 17 years Dave furthered his own education by working nights and weekends, completing more courses: The RCA Institute Radio-TV Electronics Home Study Course (1958); Basic and Advanced Industrial Statistics Courses in the New York Adult Education Program (1961); Basic Electronics offered by New York Adult Education (1962); the Quality Assurance Management Course sponsored by ASQC (1964); and the Cleveland Institute of Electronics correspondence course (1966).
For fun he built furniture, including cabinets, bookshelves, toys, a rocking horse, a kids' circular picnic table, and a kids' playhouse (his wife did the painting and finishing). He created a Heathkit stereo hi-fi for the family's living room, and a Heathkit radio for the kitchen, including handcrafted wooden cases. He became a lifelong fix-it/handy man, a man with tools and a workbench who could design, build or repair anything: woodworking, bricklaying, plumbing, electrical wiring, or circuitry. He had a jigsaw and an oscilloscope, a soldering iron and a vacuum tube tester. He could mix up, pour and smooth concrete, or design and produce with his own hands an electrical circuit or a backyard ice skating rink for the kids. He was a hard worker, willing to try and learn any new skill.
Dave was a natural-born philosopher and a man of wit and knowledge who was always studying or reading, for the sheer enjoyment of solving math puzzles, contemplating scientific facts, or just learning and furthering himself. In the basement he worked under fluorescent lights, with sharpened pencils and graph paper at his workbench, surrounded by the smell of sawdust--when he wasn't practicing swing or Dixieland solos on his trumpet or clarinet, or watching cartoons, playing badminton or chess with his daughters, or mowing the lawn or shoveling snow. He took his family on excursions to Wescott Beach, the Burnet Park Zoo, the Catskill Game Park, the Corning Glass Works, Salmon River Falls and the Suburban Park amusement park in the summers, and to the New York State Fair. Because Dave worked at Crouse-Hinds his daughters could attend the annual Crouse-Hinds Children's Christmas Parties at the magnificent Loew's Theater on Salina Street in downtown Syracuse each December.
In February 1967, after two previous summer vacations there, the family packed up a U-Haul truck, hit Route 66, and relocated themselves to Southern California, where a booming economy and better job opportunities beckoned. Dave was a courageous 42 years old, with no home or job awaiting him, only the prospects of a better future for himself and his children. He soon landed a provisional job as Machine Department Foreman at Wen-Mac Corporation in Culver City, a manufacturer of engines for model airplanes. Dave next found the challenging job he wanted: Product Engineer and Quality Control Engineer at the western office of Sprague Electric Company of North Adams, Massachusetts (12870 Panama Street, Los Angeles; July 1967-May 1971). Sprague would become most famous as the firm that manufactured the silicon disc of microscopic messages from Earth left on the moon in 1969. After renting for a year at 19809 Keaton Street in the "Sky Blue" subdivision on the hill in beautiful Saugus/Canyon Country near Newhall, California, the family bought a home in the new "American Beauty" tract off Soledad Canyon Road and moved into 20426 Delight Street in 1968.
Dave established himself as an electronics designer/engineer working for a series of companies for 23 years in California. He specialized in designing electronic filters for new products and worked with both government and private industry clients. In June 1971 he moved to Hopkins Engineering Company, 12900 Foothill Boulevard in San Fernando, where he became Vice President of Engineering (June 1971-December 1984). His final position was with Spectrum Control, Inc., 28106 Avenue Crocker, Valencia, California as Product Engineering Manager (1985-1990), where his duties included department management (supervision of staff of eight workers) and new product design. He was a member of the IEEE Society and past Chairman of EIA Filter Manufacturers' Technical Engineering Committee. He also authored technical articles and obtained a U.S. patent for a special electrical powerline module.
In July 1978 Dave traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii with coworkers on a business trip. His passport application filed around that time described him as 6 feet 1 inch tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
In his private life, Dave and his wife spent 39 years together, working side-by-side indoors and out, and devoting themselves to raising their four daughters. They also gave a loving home to innumerable stray cats, sponsored several impoverished children around the world through World Vision International, and, in the early 1950's and again in the early 1970's, took a series of foster babies into their home and their hearts. Dave was a support to his mother, his in-laws and other relatives and countless other people whom his life touched.
When personal home computers became available in the 1980's Dave instructed himself in their use starting with a 16K RAM Kaypro, graduating to a 64K RAM Osborne with two floppy drives, then a 640K RAM Toshiba T-1100, and finally treating himself to the wonders of his beloved Toshiba 5100 laptop (2 megabyte RAM with an EGA gas-plasma screen). He taught himself to hardwire together various printer/systems interfaces and mastered a library of software, including WordStar, MathCad, BASIC, and QuickBASIC. He wrote original programs in BASIC, including a program for AC circuit analysis and an original database program he named Datamation. When not working at his computer or at his job, he loved hanging out with family, swimming in the backyard pool, playing tennis, jogging, and driving under the blue California skies.
In November 1989 Dave, otherwise healthy, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He fought it with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy for 11 months. He died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, 7 October 1990 at the age of 64. Following a private memorial service for the family on Thursday, 11 October 1990, his ashes were buried the next day at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.
His oldest and youngest daughters were both pregnant with their first children when Dave died. Dave's first two grandchildren were born on the same day, a few months later. Dave is survived by 11 grandchildren in all.
O stricken hearts, remember,
O remember
How of human days he lived the better part.
--Robert Louis Stevenson
Davis Philip Stone was born on 12 December 1925 at the home of his maternal grandfather, Oscar Ehmann, a duplex at 2128 Valentine Avenue in the Bronx, New York City. He was the second of two children born to Philip and Loretta (Ehmann) Stone and was named after his father and his father's brother, Davis Handy Stone. His mother's parents were both the children of German immigrants to the New York City area; his father's side was at least half-German in origin as well, excepting the Stones, whose purported immigrant ancestor, Deacon Simon Stone, sailed from England to Massachusetts in 1635. [J. Gardner Bartlett, Simon Stone Genealogy: Ancestry and Descendants of Deacon Simon Stone of Watertown, Mass. 1320-1926 (Stone Family Association, Boston, 1926)]
Dave's father came from a humble Western Massachusetts farming background and at the time Dave was born his father was working as a "keeper" (prison guard) for the New York City Dept. of Correction and lived with his family in New Hampton (Orange County), New York near the New Hampton men's reformatory known as Hampton Farms. By 1932 the family had moved to rural Greycourt, New York, near the village of Chester, where his father then worked as a guard at the Greycourt women's farm colony. Dave's parents separated when he was a boy and his mother moved with the children into Chester and found work on factory assembly lines. At the age of 16, Dave was working at the Goshen Theatre in Goshen (about six miles from his home at 18 Academy Avenue in Chester) when he applied for his Social Security number. His closest friend was John Durland, a neighbor on Academy Ave.
Dave graduated with the Chester High School wartime class of 1943. He played on the high school ball team (had a fingersnap he could put into his pitches that confounded the opposition until they figured it out), and played the trumpet in the Chester town marching band. He later taught himself to play the clarinet and the mandolin. He had an ear and a talent for music and liked both classical and popular; his favorite bandleaders were Benny Goodman and Harry James. His first full-time job after graduating from high school was working as an "ink tracer" drawing highway maps on vellum for the Orange County Highway Department in the county offices at Goshen, New York. But that lasted only five months until he received Uncle Sam's call.
Dave, age 18, was drafted into the Army "for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law." On 22 February 1944 he was enlisted as a private at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. He was sent for basic training to Fort Belvoir, Virginia with the Army Corps of Engineers. While there he was diagnosed with scarlet fever and chronic tonsillitis, was in the hospital from March to May 1944, and had his tonsils removed in typical rough Army fashion. After boot camp he completed 12 weeks of training to be a low-speed radio operator at the Engineering School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. But when the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945 and the war ended, Dave was sent to Camp John T. Knight in Oakland, California to work as a supply sergeant, checking in men and equipment returning home from the Pacific Theater.
By December 1945 he had been sent to Fort Jackson near Columbia, South Carolina (buddies there included Benny Malamud, Bob Corrigan, Bob Trout, and Ray Lott.) He was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant from Company B of the 791st Military Police Battalion on 30 May 1946 at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. At discharge he was described as having blue eyes, brown hair, a height of 5 feet 9-1/2 inches, and weighing 165 pounds. What the Army did not note but what those who knew him learned was that he was intellectually curious, upright, honest, unpretentious, driven to make something of himself, and had a dry wit and a droll sense of humor.
He would later tell the story of how he narrowly missed dismemberment and death one afternoon early in his hitch when his buddies ("I should've been over there with them," he said) were "screwing around" with some explosives or grenades or something on a practice range and blew themselves up. At least one man was killed. Dave was hidden around some corner nearby with his nose stuck in a book when it happened. "Typical," as he put it, "and it probably saved my life."
After leaving the Army Dave got a job on the night-time cleaning crew at the Borden Dairy Company's affiliate, the Washingtonville Creamery, in Washingtonville, New York. This job lasted only a few months until Dave took advantage of the GI Bill and entered two-year Sampson College on the east side of Seneca Lake near Geneva, New York, a newly-formed ACUNY campus housed at the barracks of the former WWII Sampson Naval training base. He completed two years of Pre-Engineering study toward a BSME (Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering), 1947-48. He followed this with a third year toward his BSME at Syracuse University, 1948-49. Then his GI Bill money ran out and Dave found himself overwhelmed by the lack of funds and poor grades in his heavy load of classes. He left college (he would always regret not having attained his college degree) and found a temporary summer job driving a water tank truck for the Davey Tree Company which ended in October 1949.
To support himself Dave next landed a job as a stockboy at the Lincoln Store, a big, multi-story department store located at 221 South Salina Street in the heart of downtown Syracuse, where he soon met the love of his life, Elleanor Lipke, a young fellow employee working in the payroll department. They were married in 1950 and would have four daughters. Dave also opened his home to his mother, who retired and went to live with his family for nearly 20 years. With the help of his in-laws and their extended network of neighbors, coworkers, and friends, Dave and his wife built their first home on Taft Road in North Syracuse with their own hands, using a prefab house kit bought and shipped by train from the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan for $4,720.40.
Dave's father-in-law not only became a loving and supportive surrogate father to him, but also helped him get a job at the Crouse-Hinds Company at 7th and Wolf Streets in Syracuse (a world-renowned manufacturer of industrial lighting fixtures, traffic signals, and beacons). Dave would work there for 17 years (1950-1967), starting as a turret-lathe and chucker operator, then as a screw machine operator on the night shift (1952-1958), and ending with almost nine years as a Quality Control Engineer. He was also the Shop Mathematics Instructor (accredited by The University of New York State) for the Apprentice Training Program and, in the summer of 1962, he played on the Crouse-Hinds team in Syracuse's industrial softball league. During these 17 years Dave furthered his own education by working nights and weekends, completing more courses: The RCA Institute Radio-TV Electronics Home Study Course (1958); Basic and Advanced Industrial Statistics Courses in the New York Adult Education Program (1961); Basic Electronics offered by New York Adult Education (1962); the Quality Assurance Management Course sponsored by ASQC (1964); and the Cleveland Institute of Electronics correspondence course (1966).
For fun he built furniture, including cabinets, bookshelves, toys, a rocking horse, a kids' circular picnic table, and a kids' playhouse (his wife did the painting and finishing). He created a Heathkit stereo hi-fi for the family's living room, and a Heathkit radio for the kitchen, including handcrafted wooden cases. He became a lifelong fix-it/handy man, a man with tools and a workbench who could design, build or repair anything: woodworking, bricklaying, plumbing, electrical wiring, or circuitry. He had a jigsaw and an oscilloscope, a soldering iron and a vacuum tube tester. He could mix up, pour and smooth concrete, or design and produce with his own hands an electrical circuit or a backyard ice skating rink for the kids. He was a hard worker, willing to try and learn any new skill.
Dave was a natural-born philosopher and a man of wit and knowledge who was always studying or reading, for the sheer enjoyment of solving math puzzles, contemplating scientific facts, or just learning and furthering himself. In the basement he worked under fluorescent lights, with sharpened pencils and graph paper at his workbench, surrounded by the smell of sawdust--when he wasn't practicing swing or Dixieland solos on his trumpet or clarinet, or watching cartoons, playing badminton or chess with his daughters, or mowing the lawn or shoveling snow. He took his family on excursions to Wescott Beach, the Burnet Park Zoo, the Catskill Game Park, the Corning Glass Works, Salmon River Falls and the Suburban Park amusement park in the summers, and to the New York State Fair. Because Dave worked at Crouse-Hinds his daughters could attend the annual Crouse-Hinds Children's Christmas Parties at the magnificent Loew's Theater on Salina Street in downtown Syracuse each December.
In February 1967, after two previous summer vacations there, the family packed up a U-Haul truck, hit Route 66, and relocated themselves to Southern California, where a booming economy and better job opportunities beckoned. Dave was a courageous 42 years old, with no home or job awaiting him, only the prospects of a better future for himself and his children. He soon landed a provisional job as Machine Department Foreman at Wen-Mac Corporation in Culver City, a manufacturer of engines for model airplanes. Dave next found the challenging job he wanted: Product Engineer and Quality Control Engineer at the western office of Sprague Electric Company of North Adams, Massachusetts (12870 Panama Street, Los Angeles; July 1967-May 1971). Sprague would become most famous as the firm that manufactured the silicon disc of microscopic messages from Earth left on the moon in 1969. After renting for a year at 19809 Keaton Street in the "Sky Blue" subdivision on the hill in beautiful Saugus/Canyon Country near Newhall, California, the family bought a home in the new "American Beauty" tract off Soledad Canyon Road and moved into 20426 Delight Street in 1968.
Dave established himself as an electronics designer/engineer working for a series of companies for 23 years in California. He specialized in designing electronic filters for new products and worked with both government and private industry clients. In June 1971 he moved to Hopkins Engineering Company, 12900 Foothill Boulevard in San Fernando, where he became Vice President of Engineering (June 1971-December 1984). His final position was with Spectrum Control, Inc., 28106 Avenue Crocker, Valencia, California as Product Engineering Manager (1985-1990), where his duties included department management (supervision of staff of eight workers) and new product design. He was a member of the IEEE Society and past Chairman of EIA Filter Manufacturers' Technical Engineering Committee. He also authored technical articles and obtained a U.S. patent for a special electrical powerline module.
In July 1978 Dave traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii with coworkers on a business trip. His passport application filed around that time described him as 6 feet 1 inch tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
In his private life, Dave and his wife spent 39 years together, working side-by-side indoors and out, and devoting themselves to raising their four daughters. They also gave a loving home to innumerable stray cats, sponsored several impoverished children around the world through World Vision International, and, in the early 1950's and again in the early 1970's, took a series of foster babies into their home and their hearts. Dave was a support to his mother, his in-laws and other relatives and countless other people whom his life touched.
When personal home computers became available in the 1980's Dave instructed himself in their use starting with a 16K RAM Kaypro, graduating to a 64K RAM Osborne with two floppy drives, then a 640K RAM Toshiba T-1100, and finally treating himself to the wonders of his beloved Toshiba 5100 laptop (2 megabyte RAM with an EGA gas-plasma screen). He taught himself to hardwire together various printer/systems interfaces and mastered a library of software, including WordStar, MathCad, BASIC, and QuickBASIC. He wrote original programs in BASIC, including a program for AC circuit analysis and an original database program he named Datamation. When not working at his computer or at his job, he loved hanging out with family, swimming in the backyard pool, playing tennis, jogging, and driving under the blue California skies.
In November 1989 Dave, otherwise healthy, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He fought it with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy for 11 months. He died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, 7 October 1990 at the age of 64. Following a private memorial service for the family on Thursday, 11 October 1990, his ashes were buried the next day at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.
His oldest and youngest daughters were both pregnant with their first children when Dave died. Dave's first two grandchildren were born on the same day, a few months later. Dave is survived by 11 grandchildren in all.
O stricken hearts, remember,
O remember
How of human days he lived the better part.
--Robert Louis Stevenson
Dave's father came from a humble Western Massachusetts farming background and at the time Dave was born his father was working as a "keeper" (prison guard) for the New York City Dept. of Correction and lived with his family in New Hampton (Orange County), New York near the New Hampton men's reformatory known as Hampton Farms. By 1932 the family had moved to rural Greycourt, New York, near the village of Chester, where his father then worked as a guard at the Greycourt women's farm colony. Dave's parents separated when he was a boy and his mother moved with the children into Chester and found work on factory assembly lines. At the age of 16, Dave was working at the Goshen Theatre in Goshen (about six miles from his home at 18 Academy Avenue in Chester) when he applied for his Social Security number. His closest friend was John Durland, a neighbor on Academy Ave.
Dave graduated with the Chester High School wartime class of 1943. He played on the high school ball team (had a fingersnap he could put into his pitches that confounded the opposition until they figured it out), and played the trumpet in the Chester town marching band. He later taught himself to play the clarinet and the mandolin. He had an ear and a talent for music and liked both classical and popular; his favorite bandleaders were Benny Goodman and Harry James. His first full-time job after graduating from high school was working as an "ink tracer" drawing highway maps on vellum for the Orange County Highway Department in the county offices at Goshen, New York. But that lasted only five months until he received Uncle Sam's call.
Dave, age 18, was drafted into the Army "for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law." On 22 February 1944 he was enlisted as a private at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. He was sent for basic training to Fort Belvoir, Virginia with the Army Corps of Engineers. While there he was diagnosed with scarlet fever and chronic tonsillitis, was in the hospital from March to May 1944, and had his tonsils removed in typical rough Army fashion. After boot camp he completed 12 weeks of training to be a low-speed radio operator at the Engineering School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. But when the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945 and the war ended, Dave was sent to Camp John T. Knight in Oakland, California to work as a supply sergeant, checking in men and equipment returning home from the Pacific Theater.
By December 1945 he had been sent to Fort Jackson near Columbia, South Carolina (buddies there included Benny Malamud, Bob Corrigan, Bob Trout, and Ray Lott.) He was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant from Company B of the 791st Military Police Battalion on 30 May 1946 at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. At discharge he was described as having blue eyes, brown hair, a height of 5 feet 9-1/2 inches, and weighing 165 pounds. What the Army did not note but what those who knew him learned was that he was intellectually curious, upright, honest, unpretentious, driven to make something of himself, and had a dry wit and a droll sense of humor.
He would later tell the story of how he narrowly missed dismemberment and death one afternoon early in his hitch when his buddies ("I should've been over there with them," he said) were "screwing around" with some explosives or grenades or something on a practice range and blew themselves up. At least one man was killed. Dave was hidden around some corner nearby with his nose stuck in a book when it happened. "Typical," as he put it, "and it probably saved my life."
After leaving the Army Dave got a job on the night-time cleaning crew at the Borden Dairy Company's affiliate, the Washingtonville Creamery, in Washingtonville, New York. This job lasted only a few months until Dave took advantage of the GI Bill and entered two-year Sampson College on the east side of Seneca Lake near Geneva, New York, a newly-formed ACUNY campus housed at the barracks of the former WWII Sampson Naval training base. He completed two years of Pre-Engineering study toward a BSME (Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering), 1947-48. He followed this with a third year toward his BSME at Syracuse University, 1948-49. Then his GI Bill money ran out and Dave found himself overwhelmed by the lack of funds and poor grades in his heavy load of classes. He left college (he would always regret not having attained his college degree) and found a temporary summer job driving a water tank truck for the Davey Tree Company which ended in October 1949.
To support himself Dave next landed a job as a stockboy at the Lincoln Store, a big, multi-story department store located at 221 South Salina Street in the heart of downtown Syracuse, where he soon met the love of his life, Elleanor Lipke, a young fellow employee working in the payroll department. They were married in 1950 and would have four daughters. Dave also opened his home to his mother, who retired and went to live with his family for nearly 20 years. With the help of his in-laws and their extended network of neighbors, coworkers, and friends, Dave and his wife built their first home on Taft Road in North Syracuse with their own hands, using a prefab house kit bought and shipped by train from the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan for $4,720.40.
Dave's father-in-law not only became a loving and supportive surrogate father to him, but also helped him get a job at the Crouse-Hinds Company at 7th and Wolf Streets in Syracuse (a world-renowned manufacturer of industrial lighting fixtures, traffic signals, and beacons). Dave would work there for 17 years (1950-1967), starting as a turret-lathe and chucker operator, then as a screw machine operator on the night shift (1952-1958), and ending with almost nine years as a Quality Control Engineer. He was also the Shop Mathematics Instructor (accredited by The University of New York State) for the Apprentice Training Program and, in the summer of 1962, he played on the Crouse-Hinds team in Syracuse's industrial softball league. During these 17 years Dave furthered his own education by working nights and weekends, completing more courses: The RCA Institute Radio-TV Electronics Home Study Course (1958); Basic and Advanced Industrial Statistics Courses in the New York Adult Education Program (1961); Basic Electronics offered by New York Adult Education (1962); the Quality Assurance Management Course sponsored by ASQC (1964); and the Cleveland Institute of Electronics correspondence course (1966).
For fun he built furniture, including cabinets, bookshelves, toys, a rocking horse, a kids' circular picnic table, and a kids' playhouse (his wife did the painting and finishing). He created a Heathkit stereo hi-fi for the family's living room, and a Heathkit radio for the kitchen, including handcrafted wooden cases. He became a lifelong fix-it/handy man, a man with tools and a workbench who could design, build or repair anything: woodworking, bricklaying, plumbing, electrical wiring, or circuitry. He had a jigsaw and an oscilloscope, a soldering iron and a vacuum tube tester. He could mix up, pour and smooth concrete, or design and produce with his own hands an electrical circuit or a backyard ice skating rink for the kids. He was a hard worker, willing to try and learn any new skill.
Dave was a natural-born philosopher and a man of wit and knowledge who was always studying or reading, for the sheer enjoyment of solving math puzzles, contemplating scientific facts, or just learning and furthering himself. In the basement he worked under fluorescent lights, with sharpened pencils and graph paper at his workbench, surrounded by the smell of sawdust--when he wasn't practicing swing or Dixieland solos on his trumpet or clarinet, or watching cartoons, playing badminton or chess with his daughters, or mowing the lawn or shoveling snow. He took his family on excursions to Wescott Beach, the Burnet Park Zoo, the Catskill Game Park, the Corning Glass Works, Salmon River Falls and the Suburban Park amusement park in the summers, and to the New York State Fair. Because Dave worked at Crouse-Hinds his daughters could attend the annual Crouse-Hinds Children's Christmas Parties at the magnificent Loew's Theater on Salina Street in downtown Syracuse each December.
In February 1967, after two previous summer vacations there, the family packed up a U-Haul truck, hit Route 66, and relocated themselves to Southern California, where a booming economy and better job opportunities beckoned. Dave was a courageous 42 years old, with no home or job awaiting him, only the prospects of a better future for himself and his children. He soon landed a provisional job as Machine Department Foreman at Wen-Mac Corporation in Culver City, a manufacturer of engines for model airplanes. Dave next found the challenging job he wanted: Product Engineer and Quality Control Engineer at the western office of Sprague Electric Company of North Adams, Massachusetts (12870 Panama Street, Los Angeles; July 1967-May 1971). Sprague would become most famous as the firm that manufactured the silicon disc of microscopic messages from Earth left on the moon in 1969. After renting for a year at 19809 Keaton Street in the "Sky Blue" subdivision on the hill in beautiful Saugus/Canyon Country near Newhall, California, the family bought a home in the new "American Beauty" tract off Soledad Canyon Road and moved into 20426 Delight Street in 1968.
Dave established himself as an electronics designer/engineer working for a series of companies for 23 years in California. He specialized in designing electronic filters for new products and worked with both government and private industry clients. In June 1971 he moved to Hopkins Engineering Company, 12900 Foothill Boulevard in San Fernando, where he became Vice President of Engineering (June 1971-December 1984). His final position was with Spectrum Control, Inc., 28106 Avenue Crocker, Valencia, California as Product Engineering Manager (1985-1990), where his duties included department management (supervision of staff of eight workers) and new product design. He was a member of the IEEE Society and past Chairman of EIA Filter Manufacturers' Technical Engineering Committee. He also authored technical articles and obtained a U.S. patent for a special electrical powerline module.
In July 1978 Dave traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii with coworkers on a business trip. His passport application filed around that time described him as 6 feet 1 inch tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
In his private life, Dave and his wife spent 39 years together, working side-by-side indoors and out, and devoting themselves to raising their four daughters. They also gave a loving home to innumerable stray cats, sponsored several impoverished children around the world through World Vision International, and, in the early 1950's and again in the early 1970's, took a series of foster babies into their home and their hearts. Dave was a support to his mother, his in-laws and other relatives and countless other people whom his life touched.
When personal home computers became available in the 1980's Dave instructed himself in their use starting with a 16K RAM Kaypro, graduating to a 64K RAM Osborne with two floppy drives, then a 640K RAM Toshiba T-1100, and finally treating himself to the wonders of his beloved Toshiba 5100 laptop (2 megabyte RAM with an EGA gas-plasma screen). He taught himself to hardwire together various printer/systems interfaces and mastered a library of software, including WordStar, MathCad, BASIC, and QuickBASIC. He wrote original programs in BASIC, including a program for AC circuit analysis and an original database program he named Datamation. When not working at his computer or at his job, he loved hanging out with family, swimming in the backyard pool, playing tennis, jogging, and driving under the blue California skies.
In November 1989 Dave, otherwise healthy, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He fought it with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy for 11 months. He died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, 7 October 1990 at the age of 64. Following a private memorial service for the family on Thursday, 11 October 1990, his ashes were buried the next day at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.
His oldest and youngest daughters were both pregnant with their first children when Dave died. Dave's first two grandchildren were born on the same day, a few months later. Dave is survived by 11 grandchildren in all.
O stricken hearts, remember,
O remember
How of human days he lived the better part.
--Robert Louis Stevenson
Inscription
Davis P. Stone
1925 - 1990
Beloved Husband and Father
Family Members
Siblings
Children
