C. David Dalcanton
C. David Dalcanton, beloved husband, father, grandfather, teacher, and friend, passed away Friday, September 23rd, 2022, from complications of Legionnaires’ Disease, a few weeks shy of his 85th birthday. A long-time resident of Pittsburgh, David had recently moved to NYC from Seattle, where he had been living since 2018 to be close to his daughter.
David grew up in the coal mining towns of Washington and Canonsburg PA, where his childhood was marked by a love of baseball (often played with his cousin Bruce Dal Canton, who went on to a career in the Major Leagues) and of the warm potato chips you could get straight from the factory, before they were bagged. His chronic joint problems soon curtailed his baseball-playing, but his love of potato chips was lifelong. His childhood was shaped by the strong Italian community in which he was embedded, although much was lost in his family’s drive to be fully American, including the language (spoken at home, but typically not in front of him) and his first name (which people would Italianize to “Carlo”, much to his parents’ displeasure). David eventually lost the Catholicism on his own, but kept the love of food, and was rightfully proud of his tomato sauce.
After graduating from Canonsburg High School in 1955 as the Senior President, David attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon), where he was a member of the Phi Kappa fraternity and went by the nickname “Delbo” for reasons that remain obscure. During his summers, he worked at the Bureau of Mines helping to test explosives…very carefully. He majored in Chemical Engineering and was a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, but not out of any great passion for the subject. He instead wanted to be a teacher like his mother, who unfortunately had other ideas for his future, so an engineer he became.
Following graduation in 1959, and a short stint working at US Steel in Youngstown, David headed to San Diego to work for General Dynamics Astronautics as an engineering chemist on Project Atlas. It was there that he met his future wife Carol, who had been working at General Dynamics as a Quality Control Analyst for the same rocket program (after successfully pushing to move out of the steno pool). As David told it, the chemists would peek out the hallway window when an attractive woman walked past, and that was when he first noticed Carol. They were introduced more formally when his roommate, a coworker of Carol’s, brought David along to her apartment in Mission Beach in February 1962.
As fate would have it, David met his future wife just months before he was scheduled to enter the Peace Corps, in late April 1962. They dated throughout this brief period, and she visited him at NYU, where he and the other volunteers underwent eight weeks of intensive training in history, teaching, and the Somali language as preparation for becoming the first group of Peace Corps volunteers in Somalia, two years after the country’s independence. After initially landing in Mogadishu, David’s first post was at the remote Dayaha boarding school for boys, where he taught science, history, and math. A year later (after some plans were derailed due to a deteriorating political situation) David was posted jointly to the Ahmed Gurrey Day School in the center of Hargeisa, and the Girls’ Teacher Training Institute several miles away, commuting back and forth between them on bicycle and then scooter. The program ended earlier than expected due to bombing of Hargeisa by Ethiopian forces using jet planes provided by the US, leading to an early withdrawal of the American Peace Corps volunteers.
David’s time in Somalia was by far the most formative experience in his life. It shaped his lifelong interest in the politics and history of Africa, which led to his later academic pursuits in political science, including a masters degree from Duquesne University in 1967, and his PhD from University of Pittsburgh in 1973, with theses on Kenya and South Africa, respectively. It gave him his first experience with teaching, which later became his profession and which had always been his calling. It brought him much needed independence from his strong-willed mother, and strengthened his ties with his future wife, with whom he kept up a regular correspondence throughout his time in the Peace Corps. And, it forged ties with a remarkable group of people who remained his close friends for the next six decades of his life.
David returned to the United States in July 1964, after four months of traveling around the Middle East and Europe with Carol, who had transformed from “girlfriend” to “fiancé” during dinner at a cheap restaurant in Florence. They were married in Louisville Kentucky in August, and quickly resettled in Pittsburgh, where he immediately started teaching physics and chemistry at Fifth Avenue High while working on his masters degree part time. He left teaching in 1968, when he entered graduate school at Pitt, but finding after graduation that the academic job market in African political science was not in high demand, returned to teaching at Westinghouse High School in 1972 to put Carol through law school. An avid tennis player, during the school year David would coach the boys on the Westinghouse tennis team (who typically referred to him as “Dr D”), and during summers, David would spend hours playing tennis with his family or sitting courtside at Chatham College, playing pickup games of tennis with a regular crew of incredibly tan men of all ages. David transferred to Taylor Allderdice High School in the late 1980’s, where he taught Chemistry until his retirement in 2003. His subsequent years were spent traveling the world with Carol, frequently accompanied by their friend David Kremen, and sometimes friends from the Peace Corps or Carol’s relatives. As his health and memory deteriorated, he and Carol moved to Seattle to be close to their daughter Julianne. They followed her to New York City in Fall of 2022, but he was hospitalized within a week of his arrival, and passed away shortly thereafter, leaving dreams of musicals and museums unfulfilled.
The many people whose lives David touched will remember not just the biographical details of his life, but who he was as a person. He was an intelligent, interesting man, who consumed non-fiction with the same vigor and consistency as he did potato chips. He was always, always thinking, which sometimes manifested in muttered conversations with himself, or in his semi-secret habit of always counting steps and stairs. A natural teacher, he was happy to share what he learned, and was a font of trivia, both important and incidental (“Do you know it’s 37 steps from the sidewalk to the front door?”). He adored making people laugh, and had a deep well of funny stories, told with his dry, sarcastic wit. Even as his memories faded, he still preserved his humor, and specialized in turning trips to the ER into the David Dalcanton Comedy Hour. He was delighted by dogs and children, with a willingness to be completely and creatively ridiculous to secure their good will. He was also a good friend, and he and Carol cultivated a strong network of wonderful people who shared their love of conversation, laughter, and excellent food.
Underlying all of this was the profound love he had for his wife Carol, and his daughter Julianne. In the family he created, he found the unconditional love he lacked in his childhood, and became much closer to the whole man he should have been. He loved the women in his life unconditionally and with fervor. He supported them in every possible way, never seeking to make either of them “less than” what they were destined to be. He was an incredibly involved and devoted father, taking advantage of his school schedule to be the parent “on call” after school and during vacations, always fully believing the fiction that his daughter was absolutely perfect in every way. He was unfailingly proud of Carol, supporting her as she went to law school with a small child underfoot in the early 70s, and keeping the home running during her frequent trips for work as she made her career in Westinghouse’s law division. While they bickered about small things, sometimes constantly, David’s love for Carol was unshakable, and his pleasure in her company never faded. Even in the grips of advancing dementia, he always wanted her near, and continually repeated how much he loved her, and how she was the best thing that ever happened to him. As Julianne’s family grew, he was happy to expand his love of family to include his grandchildren Hazel and Alex Borden, and his son-in-law Chris Borden, who selflessly helped care for David as his health and faculties declined, and was the son David never knew he needed. He will be sorely missed by those he left behind.
David was laid to rest at Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, a few yards away from his travel companion David Kremen, in hopes that they will keep each other company on their next great adventure. A memorial will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests making a donation to Somali Community Services of Seattle in David’s name (https://www.somcss.org/).
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