Kind of a shock; nobody seems to have known of any reason to expect any such thing any time soon. A phone call had reached Sharon and Richard (who were hosting the Minn-StF meeting yesterday) just 5 minutes before Lydy and I walked in.
The information that’s reached me so far is that he probably died quickly of a heart attack in his home about September 4th, but wasn’t found until the 14th (hence the lack of certainty on date and cause of death).
So it was a bit of a subdued meeting with a lot of reminiscence.
Dave, who most of the years I knew him insisted on the capital “E” in DavE (but mostly dropped that after becoming a Baron of Ladonia), moved to Minneapolis quite shortly after I became a permanent resident here, I think in 1978. He was already a photographer and interested in the history of fandom, so we had that in common, and he was an accomplished bridge player and this was during Minn-StF’s bridge period. He moved into the apartment I vacated in the basement of the Bozo Bus Building when I bought Finagle’s Freehold.
I will say that, Facebook profile to the contrary, he did not live in Memphis Tennessee.
Oh, about that Barony—DavE described himself as being “a real baron of a fake country.” The people running Ladonia appear to have properly granted him that honor in line with their historic traditions (which go back to 1996, it looks like).
Here are a few of my photos of DavE over the decades:
