Dave Hatch (1944-2008)

I met Dave on the first day of class when we started 7th grade - remember Miss Martin's room - the "A" room?! Dave didn't graduate with us as he finished high school in Okinawa where .his parents moved for our senior year. He had a degree in HRl (hotel, restaurant and institutional management) from Michigan State. He also was drafted into the Army and served in Okinawa.

Dave worked in the food industry for several years and finished with a restaurant in Petoskey. He was always a car guy and at one time had four vintage race cars which he raced several times. I was his "pit" crew on a lot of them. He usually did well if he didn't break the car with his aggressive driving, but he was booted from one series for being a little too aggressive.

He was married four times and had three children, a daughter and two sons.

When he had what he thought were shoulder problems from falling off his motorcycle, he asked me in June of 2007 ifl wanted to go on a road trip because he had trouble driving. I picked him up in Phoenix where he was living, and we went cross-country to eastern Pennsylvania where his two sons had a cottage he stayed in for the summer. That fall he called and said his shoulder problems had been diagnosed as ALS (Lou Gehrig disease). He died in June 2008.

--written by John Eberly