Dave Gingery died peacefully May 3, 2004.

He may have gone to the big machine shop in the sky, but many of us still think of that ornery character as still very much alive and likely to create mayhem (as well as a few new machine tools) at any time. I still keep looking over my shoulder expecting him to be there with his out-of-tune banjo...

What follows on these pages are some personal and incomplete recollections of a fellow eccentric, an eccentric that master-eccentrics like Edison or Franklin would have had fun meeting.

Dave had been doctoring heart trouble since about 1985. Around New Years 2004, there was a strange absence of inane email from Dave, and that was unusual. I was about to ask Vince about the ol' man, but Vince got to me first, saying his father had had a serious heart attack. The options were heart-bypass with its unknown complications and outcome, or no more than six months to live. Dave chose to face the inevitable, and said nuts to surgery. When the grim reaper visited five months later he was still playing that damned banjo, popping nitroglycerine and morphine like there was no tomorrow. And for Dave there was no tomorrow.

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A portion of Dave's Obituary

David J. Gingery

David J. Gingery, 71, Springfield, died in his home Monday, May 3, 2004, at 6:33 a.m. The son of Royal and Leone Gingery, he was born Dec. 19, 1932, in Ironwood, Mich. He was a writer and publisher. David was preceded in death by his wife, Lorraine, and a son, Victor. He is survived by...

Mr. Gingery will be cremated. No services are planned....

(reports of Lindsay trying to sell Dave's ashes on eBay are greatly exaggerated...)

In the May 23, 2004 edition of the Springfield News-Leader newspaper, one of Dave's many friends (but one of the few of us who would admit it!) wrote a column about the ol' coot that started like this...

Author was best at explaining the complex

One of Springfield's most widely read authors died early this month, but few people knew it.
And that's just the way Dave Gingery wanted it. No funeral. No fuss.

But he forgot to say no newspaper column...

Upwards of a half-million copies of books written by Dave Gingery have sold worldwide. He is a hero to those who prefer to, or who must, build and repair things themselves....

associate editor Mike O'Brien