Born and raised in Newport, RI, David J. Dwyer found his calling early in life: making people laugh. The middle child of nine siblings in a large, boisterous Irish family – two older brothers, two older sisters, two younger brothers, and two younger sisters – his humor sometimes had to compete for airtime. So, he took his outrageous stories and antics to a broader audience: friends, students, Army buddies, extended family, and virtually anyone he met.
The greatest gift anyone could give David was an audience and a laugh: a belly laugh, a chuckle, or even a little giggle. He took them all as wins. To many, he was the funniest person in the room, someone who could jumpstart a party, and perhaps the most unforgettable character they had ever met.
In 1967, shortly after graduating from Rogers High School, David quite literally “headed for the hills” of northeastern Vermont to attend college and, as a lifelong peace protester, to put some distance between himself and the draft. He traded his Sperry Top-Siders and Breton-reds, somewhat tentatively, for pack boots and a down parka. Over time, he acclimated to –25-degree winters and fell in love with Vermont life and its people, many of whom had moved there to ski, farm, teach, and live closer to the land. They became his lifelong friends.
Those friends remember his passion for progressive politics at every level, local, state, and national. He followed every race and was constitutionally incapable of keeping his opinions to himself. They also remember him as exceedingly kind, witty, and quite often irreverent.
In 1969, David married his Newport sweetheart, Catherine (Herz) Dwyer, “the girl next door,” as he liked to call her. During nearly 57 years of marriage, they had the great good fortune to raise their daughters, Meggan and Molly, amid Vermont’s natural beauty and among close friends in a community that prized creativity, sports, and fun. Costume parties were a fixture; the more outrageous, the better.
In 1970, David earned a B.A. in English. After a brief stint in the National Guard, he was hired the following year to teach, a career he had never planned to pursue. If he had told his own high school teachers, who knew him as a wise guy and a cut-up, that he intended to become a teacher, he said, they would have “slapped him.”
His gift for storytelling served him exceptionally well across 34 years as a high school English teacher and athletic coach at Lyndon Institute in Lyndonville, Vermont. Drawing on his own dislike of academia, he figured out exactly what kind of teacher he wanted to be.
His students learned that the surest way to throw him off track was to ask about his family. Somehow, amid tales of disastrous sailing adventures, traveling the world with a newborn, and attending Lyndon State College during the tumultuous 1960s, he still managed to teach them to appreciate Steinbeck, Harper Lee, and Dickens, to memorize Shakespeare, and to diagram a sentence.
The athletic fields and cross-country and ski trails became his other classrooms. There, he spent afternoons and weekends inspiring, teasing, cheering, coaching, and generally encouraging the kids of northern Vermont to run until they fell over and to laugh with the same intensity. His famously loud whistle and sideline cry of “Faster leg movements!!!” were his trademarks.
Across more than 65 varsity seasons coaching cross-country running, cross-country skiing, and track, his teams won 18 state championships, and he had the privilege of coaching two Olympic athletes. But for David, it was never about winning. It was about having fun and being part of a team.
He lured kids into a sport by promising that, if they gave it a week and did not like it, he would help them quit. They seldom did.
His love for his daughters Meggan and Molly was boundless and unconditional. At times, he greatly exaggerated their accomplishments, and although listeners were skeptical, no one dared question him.
To his grandchildren, Cyrus Blake, Lola Blake, Asa Blake, and Maite Temple-Dwyer, he was never Grandpa or Gramps. He was Blackjack. They adored having a grandfather who would build a giant stick fort or serve as master of ceremonies for the family Olympics. He was a little bit crazy and always silly.
When summer finally arrived in Vermont, the Rhode Island seashore beckoned. David would pack up the dogs, the kids, and the swimsuits and move to Newport to join his family and childhood friends. Those precious six weeks were filled with racing Shields with his brother, in-laws and friends, working construction, and spending long days at Second Beach at Lifeguard Stand 1.
He loved being outdoors in every season, whether he was shingling a house, coaxing vegetables out of improbable places, or driving Ocean Drive in a storm just to watch the waves. He baked his own bread and never said no to a good beer, a cookie, a costume, a game of bocce, or an opportunity for a prank. When everyone else tired out, he would bodysurf alone for hours or throw a Frisbee to himself when no one else would play.
David was predeceased by his parents, Timothy Jay Dwyer and Helen Dwyer; his brothers, John J. Dwyer and Timothy Michael Dwyer; and his sisters, Susan Wallace and Patricia Ewenson.
He is survived by his wife, Catherine Dwyer; his daughters, Molly Dwyer and Meggan Dwyer; his son-in-law, Sam Temple; his sisters, Mary-Ellen Kirwin, and Libby Zorbas and her husband, Fred Zorbas; and his brothers, Peter Dwyer and his wife, Gale Dwyer, and Charles Dwyer and his wife, Bongkot Dwyer; and his sister-in-law, Susan Dwyer. He is also survived by his grandchildren, Cyrus Blake, Lola Blake, Asa Blake, and Maite Temple-Dwyer, and by numerous nieces and nephews and their children.
His family is planning tributes in his honor in both Newport and Vermont. Details will be announced at a later date.
Donations in his memory can be made to Lyndon Institute in Lyndonville, VT, lyndoninstitute.org/support-li, or to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center in Newport, RI, mlkccenter.org.
Upon retiring from Lyndon Institute, David urged the assembled faculty and students to take care of their school and to take care of each other. He ended with the words of one of his favorite Newport friends, 90-year-old Hilda, who worked at the local dry cleaner:
“Y’all be sweet now, and walk easy, baby.”
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