Semper Vigilans!

2LT Alan L. Parrish,
Civil Air Patrol

We are busier than ever at CAP.

“Performing Missions for America,” don’t you know.

All the While doing what we enjoy doing best. Flying.

Sure could use DAVE’S HELP.

I miss him.

I just found your website when I Googled Dave’s (I always called him Mr. Fielding) name. I never got the opportunity to meet you, but I have heard many things about you from the CAP family. Mr. Fielding will always be known as one of the most influential people in my life. He gave me, a scared kid, wings on more than one occasion. One conversation we had stands out in my memory. It must have been 2002 or earlier. I was blissfully talking about my plans for the future and how marriage was one of them. He promptly told me not to get my hopes up I told him that there is such a thing as true love and that there really is hope to find it – and that when I did he’d be the first I’d invite to my wedding. March 6 2004 he walked up to the head table and complimented my choice in music. Soon after love found him too. You so blessed his life. Thank you.

My heart and prayers are with you always. If you ever need anything please don’t hesitate to contact me. Stories of true love never really end… They just gain immortality.

God Bless you…

Aleya

I am so sorry for your loss. It was 27 years ago, more or less, that I met David, and through all my growing up–or so it seems–he was my best friend and ‘partner in crime’. When we met again (much, much later), I was astonished by the man that he had become. I loved him with all my heart, then and now. And now I regret more than ever that I let our friendship lapse a second time. I suppose in my heart of hearts I never imagined that we would not meet once more, somewhere, somehow.

I cannot express the sadness that I have been feeling these last few days, for you, for Mona, for all those who knew and loved him, and (selfishly I know) for myself. Such a remarkable human being; a mind like quicksilver, the heart of a lion, and–dare I say it–the feet of clay of any human being, which only made him more real, and therefore even more remarkable. I would have liked to have met you, and seen the two of you together. I see now how happy you made him and how he was not alone on this final journey. For that, Gail, I will be forever grateful. Yours was indeed, as said elsewhere, a “great love story”. I am so saddened that it all had to end, so soon after it had begun.

Thank you for your love for David, and your courage, and I wish you all the strength and healing that you may require in the days ahead. Thank you for your words and pictures…painful as it may be to read at times, knowing now what I know, that David is gone. And yet he seems not gone at all; his openhearted generosity, his boundless curiosity, his amazing mind; the boy I knew, and the man that he had become, all live on in the minds of everyone who knew him. No one who met David ever came away unchanged, and even if his spirit has been set free–I know not where–he lives on in each and every one of us, forever young, forever his quintessential self.

It is nearly impossible to speak of David in the past tense; no one so vital could possibly be gone. And yet…and yet, I am given a needful reminder of how fleeting life can be. David, I can still hear your voice chiding me about one thing or another, reminding me that I ought to appreciate what I already have, that life is far too short to waste on grieving for what once was, or what may be. I may not have believed you then, but I do now. I wish I could have told you that, in person. You were right of course, my dear David, you were right.

I am sorry, Gail (and how odd that our names are the same, that David’s life would be bracketed thus, although I am sure we are very different people), that my comment is so lengthy and so personal. It helps to write it out somehow, and I hope you derive some comfort from it. Please know that when my small family and I are lighting the candles for Chanukah, and when we gather with my parents–who remember David as the young man who spent as much time at their house as he did at his own–for Christmas, we will be holding you, Mona, and David in our hearts.

Peace and Blessings,

Gail Snyder Shochet

I hope you find comfort this holiday through some grace.
our condolences.

Chris & Magda