When he asked his father why he doesn't have a middle name, Dave says, "my father said it was due to rationing at the time!" He recalls his father as an inspiring person in his life.

“My father was in the Royal Navy and served during the Second World War. When the war was over, he came back and decided to work at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He undertook that task readily and happily; and that was it, from there on until he retired. He did some worthwhile work there, rescuing children from alcoholic parents, or all sorts of things. He was very, very, busy and committed - determined that he was going to do as much as he could.

After my fifth birthday I went to the local primary school. My father had a small Remington typewriter. It was his habit to set up the typewriter on a desk, and he would then sit me on his lap and write reports on cases that he was dealing with. I soon became aware of the connection between the symbols and what they meant, to such an extent that I was one of a very few handfuls of five-year old's that could read fluently. Although I was bored at school, my father gave me a head-start, and it gave me a passion for reading. Every birthday and every Christmas my Father bought me a CS Forester Horn blower book. I still have those today."

When he finished school, Dave joined the Royal Air Force and became a navigator of Victor aircrafts. They were developed during the Cold War as part of the United Kingdom's airborne nuclear deterrent program. Eventually, they were repurposed and retired.

“You can see the two [on my wall] they are Victor aircrafts. They tore out all the tanks so that we could put other things in and that's when I decided that I'd have a crack at being a teacher, so I resigned my Commission.”

In his early 30s, Dave went back to study education at Norwich University and found his true passion in teaching.

“I did several months of educational studies and then got a job at the school close to where I'd been in the Air Force. And off I went, I taught technology and design and I got stuck into that straight away. Working with materials, design and technology with wood, metal, plastics - whatever we had. I loved every minute of it. I never realised it until sometime, that I had this ability to be a teacher.

Dave decided to move to Australia, and from there he taught at Kingston High School for the rest of his career.

“I really did enjoy it. We got to create new stuff, and it was stuff that young people could understand and was worth understanding. They were making things with proper materials and the result was stuff they could use that was worthwhile. We used to have classroom sessions in theory. Then we'd have practical sessions where we could test the students by seeing if we could get them to make what they’d learnt about in the theory session. And you could see the young people were very keen to be successful.

You could tell if teachers were committed to what they were doing. Or whether or not they were labouring away because they just thought they ought to do it. But I enjoyed every moment of it. And many other teachers teaching there were committed and all of them were professional. At some stage, a couple of them said to me, “How do you do it, Dave?” I said, “How do you do what?” They said, “Well, Look at them! They're all there absolutely angelic and they're working as hard as they can.” I said, “Ohh, I thought that was what we had to do!”

Dave was married, but never had children. He invested much time looking after the children in his community.

“My wife, we'd been married for about 15 years. Sadly, she was killed with ovarian cancer, but she was absolutely brilliant. She never grumbled but she did have a horrible time for those three or four months. So, there I was. My dear wife was no longer my dear wife, it was just me.

But I was so busy with the students. I thought there’s nothing I can do to change what happened. But what I can do is work as hard as I can to keep myself established and committed to busy doing stuff.

There was one occasion when I was teaching quite elderly teenagers. I turned up at the school and they were all sitting there, very quietly. I thought, “They're just sitting there. What's going on here?” They all came into the classroom, and I didn't say anything. I just walked up to where the lectern was, and I was about to plunge into my stuff, but they got ahead of me. There were about 20 in the class, and they made up some sort of poem, and there I was, in the middle of this classroom with about 25 teenagers - well into their teens. And they just said what an excellent bloke I was, you know and that just then rolled on. It was getting towards the end of their time in school before they went off into the real world. I was really almost embarrassed, but teaching was something I was made for, I really enjoyed it.”

Dave retired in the early 2000s and became a founding member of the Kingston Community Garden and Men’s Shed in 2006. In 2019, he was awarded a certificate of appreciation for his work by the Kingborough Council. They celebrated his development of many mentoring programs. The programs let young students learn woodworking, bike repair, and electronics.

“Young people with special needs have also benefited from David’s mentorship and friendship. In particular there are two young men who have worked with David to create useful items from simple chopping boards up to more complex trolleys. This allows these young people to have time away to develop their skills in a safe and supportive space, with a friendly and experienced mentor.”

- Kingborough Council Awards, 2019.

“I ended up here [at CHT], I like to read a lot of books. We did an expedition to the local library, a teacher would bring about 30 children. And then the teacher used the library as an education space with us. I have the two portraits of me on the wall created during that time. The young feller who made the blue one, he got a very good likeness, whereas the other one... that's not like me, not at all.”