Erin Noxon here, David’s daughter.
It is with a feeling of great loss that I share to the world that my father, David John Flynn, passed away this Monday, November 9, 2020. Even as I and the rest of my family deal with our grief, we’re also rejoicing in all of the wonderful stories that people are sending us of the ways my father affected them in their lives.
For a man who always complained that everyone was too dramatic (especially me, who he often referred to as his “Anne of Green Gables” because of my penchant, as he put it, to be “SO DRAMATIC!”), and that he was just a “simple superficial guy”, he sure did impact every person he came in contact with throughout his life. He cared so deeply for everyone as well, not that he ever would have admitted it.
As this website’s hosting provider, and support tech for all of the years he has had a website, and as his daughter, let me tell you a little about him; because maybe you only knew him a little, or maybe a lot, or maybe you’d never met, but he was a great, great man, so let me introduce you.
My dad grew up for most of his life in the Midwest. Born in Minnesota, his family moved around an awful lot. One of my favorite stories was how when he was at college, he came home one weekend to find that there were strangers now living in his home; they told him where his family had moved! All of that resulted in that, when he finally settled down in Florida, he bought a house and never wanted to move again.
He was an engineer from the time he was 4 years old, constantly building things and loving numbers. Early pictures I can find of him show him with building blocks, but eventually that would turn into a love of electronics. He was known to collect old parts and walk miles with his little brother to pick up old vacuum tubes from TVs and radios to take home and see if they were still good anymore. Then he built a giant radio out of his room, with wires running around the ceiling.
In the 8th grade at Lansing Memorial Junior High School, he met my mother, who was forced to sit between him and another boy to keep them apart (because they wouldn’t stop talking). He annoyed her so much, and when they went to High School they were in different crowds. He played trombone in the band, and still loved math, though his grades were average (and occasionally quite awful).
He eventually went to University of Illinois, which he always told me was “blue and orange”, much much different from my Gator “orange and blue”.
One summer he was putting together a beach party and begged my mom to go out with him and a group of friends. While there, she noticed that his suit had a lifeguard patch. She needed a volunteer to go to a church summer camp she was organizing and persuaded him to join her. They ended up talking a lot and then he asked her to help him out with something at his own church. They had a fun time and then he was constantly calling her in the fall when they both returned to their different universities.
He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, the only reason was because computer engineering didn’t exist yet as a degree, but computers were what he had come to love.
Having always been an ROTC in college, after graduation he joined the army. He went to Aberdeen proving ground and then was stationed with my mother, who he married in August of 1966, in Fort Dix New Jersey. He had an incredible sense of duty, and I think the army really helped to instill this in him. Even in his last days he worked hard to finish everything he thought needed to be done, and I know he got his sense of duty from the army.
He served in the Vietnam war running the giant computer system at Long Binh Post, just outside of Saigon. He actually volunteered to go, and would proudly wear his yellow Vietnam bar hat for the rest of his life.
When Saigon was evacuated, many US families were recruited as host families for the Vietnamese people who left with the military. My father and mother hosted one of his key punch operators and her entire family for many months until they became settled in as new Americans, and they all kept in touch their whole lives.
He started to apply for different jobs by mail while he was in Vietnam for various computer-based work. After he came back, the story goes that he and my mother were walking through a mall parking lot which was covered in snow, when he stepped too deep, the snow went up and into his high army boots. As the chill settled in, he turned to my mother and said, “I think I’m going to look into that job in Florida.” Although he left active army service at this point, about 6 years later he started in the Army Reserves and completed a full 20 years in the military, retiring as a Lt. Colonel.
The job was at Pratt and Whitney aircraft and he was to be a systems analyst. They lived in Riviera Beach for a while and then eventually decided to move up to Jupiter. When they first came down to South Florida, they used to have ‘I hate Florida’ parties at the holidays because they missed the changing of the seasons. However, once that “mouse park”, as he called it, opened in Orlando, they changed their tune, and a lifelong love of Disney ensued as us kids arrived on scene.
After they moved to Jupiter, I was born and then 2 years later my brother was. Growing up in South Florida in the 80s and early 90s was idyllic and wonderful. It was a period right before the rapid expansion, and we both have fond memories of what Florida looked like before this sprawl it looks like now.
My father worked for Pratt and Whitney aircraft starting in 1969 and worked there for more than 30 years until Pratt and Whitney decided they were moving their offices to Connecticut, so he retired for the first time and was hired in his same office as the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) took over computer operations in the building. He worked there for several years until he retired his second time, from there.
After that, he turned his retirement into another job, and fully embraced his previous part-time love, tax preparation. The man was a genius in numbers (I can tell you sometime about how he would go on and on about slide rules) and would sit and tell people how to file their tax return in the most beneficial way for themselves. Throughout my adult life, he would constantly give me stacks of his business cards and tell me to pass them out to my friends who needed help with taxes; he would answer their emails and all of their questions for free. Even now I have a stack of them in my desk. He worked at H&R Block until this October, and made sure, before he left, he finished every single one of his client’s accounts (again, that strong sense of duty).
He also learned that he could work part time for Disney and in 2008 got a job working in the Animal Kingdom in the Boneyard playground in Dinoland. He would drive up to Disney once a month to make sure he got in his hours. He loved educating the kids about the different dinosaurs in the boneyard and about how the mammoth bones were not from a dinosaur! What kind of animal was it? It was a mammal! He worked there until this year when COVID closed the parks.
But doing just one thing wasn’t for him. He also did a lot of volunteering. Growing up, both of us children were in scouts. He was my brother’s Boy Scout leader and saw him through his Eagle Award. He drove us on so many Girl Scout trips and was a lifeguard for us, too. In the years following my graduating from the Environmental Research and Field Studies Academy at Jupiter High School (JERFSA), he started to volunteer to drive their school bus for them on field trips. He went and got a special license just so he could drive the buses. The students of JERFSA have shared so many wonderful stories with me, from the time he took out a traffic sign to when the bus caught on fire… but he drove the bus for them up until 2017. So many stories, so many people touched by his work and his volunteering.
Eventually what would take him from us was Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, something that probably affected him due to his service in Vietnam and exposure to Agent Orange. He fought it for 2 years, but it turned out he had the worst of the kinds that you could get. And it just didn’t leave him alone.
This week myself and my family have been discussing the different things we could do to allow people to show how much they appreciated him.
We have chosen the following two charities. If you would like to donate in my father’s name, please choose one of the following charities.
First, the Learning Exchange for Global Associations and Connections, Inc (LEGACy). This Non-profit was started by myself with help from Dad. He was a part of the exchange program it supports from the beginning in 2014 and when we were forming the NPO, he was our advisor in all things. Without him we wouldn’t have been able to start it, without his support every year we wouldn’t have been able to continue it, and of course, we wouldn’t have had a driver for the first year, as he drove us wherever we went. He was an integral part of LEGACy and it will always be a part of his own legacy.
Go Fund Me Donation Page and more information about LEGACy: https://www.gofundme.com/f/26yh9fia40
Second, the Make a Wish/Disney partnership. He always said that his job at Animal Kingdom in Disney was his most favorite job he had ever had and that any person should get to have fun at Disney. So we thought Make a Wish was a nice way for some deserving people to get their chance. You can check “donate in honor” of a person when you donate, and list his name.
Make a Wish/Disney page: https://wish.org/disney
Thank you so much for your love of my Dad. If you would like to comment below, you can, or you can simply go to his Facebook and comment there as well. His Facebook link is here: https://www.facebook.com/flynndj
Thank you.