I think that the words that best describe Dave “The Sleepy Fox” Field are enthusiasm and manic enterprise. He was always looking for something new, non-conventional, and innovative, and he threw himself completely into everything he did. He also made it a cardinal rule to have fun doing it. For instance:
In high school in Harrison NY, Dave found that he could empty his school by phoning in a false bomb threat (he got caught).
In freshman year on First Davis, among his projects was a barely-legal AM radio transmitter, with a definitely-not-legal antenna of magnet wire that went around the room; he played rock ‘n’ roll music, interspersed with gleeful chortles of “There’s KRUD on your dial!,” and helped coordinate the attempt to blow the Davis plumbing with synchronized flushes (fortunately, it didn’t work).
He and Frank Perlroth ’63 had a noon show on KARL (then broadcasting carrier-current just to the campus), playing rock ‘n’ roll. He delighted in tormenting Garrick Utley ’61, trying to break him up on-air by blowing in his ears and goofing around during newscasts.
Frank and Dave later founded Records Unlimited, which provided the campus with cheap vinyl, to the great dismay of the local record store.
Legend has it that he bought a large economy box of condoms and retailed them one-by-one to Carls who didn’t want to do their own shopping of that nature.
As Treasurer of the Carleton Student Association, he negotiated a deal for the campus soft-drink machines that restricted choice (to some grumbling, as I recall) but returned much more profit to CSA. (Legend again has it that he salted the machines with the occasional beer bottle to encourage sales.) CSA ran a surplus under Dave, and he did similar service as Business Manager of The Carletonian.
After Carleton, Dave went to Harvard Business School. He spent a summer with Frank doing undercover market research for a gasoline company, hanging around freeway gas stations, pretending to survey motorists, and secretly noting how much gas the stations were selling. Also during this time, he did an internship with a British kitchen-appliance manufacturer (stuffy and old-fashioned, he thought). From London, he hopped over the Channel, the Mediterranean and the Sahara to visit Jamie Thomson ’64, by then a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zinder, Niger. Jamie remembers that visit: “We hitchhiked south to Kano in Northern Nigeria, then further south to Kaduna, to catch a ride (the Fox was a confirmed railroad buff) on the eastern trunk line of the Nigerian national railways running down to Port Harcourt (through territory that would a few years later become a major theatre of the Biafran war). “At Port Harcourt, on the southeastern coast of Nigeria, we caught a delta ferry to Buguma, where Doug and Barb (Brown) Dewey, both ’64, were in the middle of their two years as PCVs teaching English. Doug had been Dave’s roommate; a major reunion. “Then across the south of Nigeria by bush taxi, through the remains of the country’s primeval forest (trees 12′ in diameter and 200′ tall), and on to the capital, Lagos. There, at the former German embassy on Ikoya, an island in Lagos harbor and the colonial era redoubt of Europeans, we attended a memorable PCV Friday night party. “After a few days in Lagos, on west across Dahomey, Togo and into Ghana, then a new African socialist state. The Fox worked his connections from The Business School to wangle an invitation to a party thrown by Ghanaian and European supporters of then President Kwame Nkrumah (the latter fell in a coup less than six months later). “One week on we’d arrived in Kumasi, seat of a former major West African empire, where another Carleton ’64 woman PCV was teaching in a technical school. From there the Fox flew back to the Hub, and I headed back to Zinder for another year’s work in an adult literacy program.”
After The Business School (as he styled it), Dave and a number of colleagues were recruited by a shadowy U.S. government agency–ostensibly the Agency for International Development, but it really wasn’t–under threat of being drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam. (This was presumably during the period when Robert McNamara thought that the only thing his war needed was good management, and these graduates would be the best.) This job took him to South Asia–he was based in Lahore, Pakistan–where he picked up some interesting diseases and parasites, and took part in some government work that he didn’t talk about.
After this, Dave accepted a post marketing blue jeans for Levi Strauss in Australia. His campaign sounded pretty informal–as I recall, it involved Mini Mokes full of young people, and a slogan something like “Down With Pants!” He acquired not only a detailed knowledge of the jeans industry, but an enthusiastic appreciation for colorful Australian idioms, particularly terms like “chunder,” “throwing your voice,” and “technicolor yawn.” Dave met his first wife Susan at the 1967 wedding of friends, and they married in 1970. They lived for a while in the smallest county in California (Dave joked about importing a few friends and taking it over), overseeing a jade grinding operation aimed at producing expensive tiles for an upscale clientele. His workforce consisted largely of pot-smoking California hippies. Dave and Susan then moved to a small town in Vermont. Dave loved small-town life. He worked for a while as a self-taught plumber (using Robertson screws to prevent others’ fiddling with his work, and refusing to return to customers who had ignored his previous advice about keeping pipes from freezing). He also owned a printing and office services business, and for a while he built spec houses. He had a local radio show, again mostly playing rock ‘n’ roll music from the ’50s and ’60s. He delighted in local town meetings, asking Harvard-MBA questions to surprised big-city consultants who thought they were dealing with rural Yankee hicks.
Susan died in the summer of 1975. On the afternoon of his second wedding, in 1976, Dave found himself in the hospital, soon to be diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of blood plasma cells. His new wife gave him no support and went instead for his money, leading to an acrimonious divorce. Dave then met and married Susan Hanewald. He was in remission for a while, and they took a trip to China together. By the time they returned, the remission had ended and he was ill again.
He died in June 1983, at the age of 40. The next year, his parents established the David John Field Prize at Carleton, “awarded each year to a member of the senior class whose non-athletic activities best exhibit the qualities of imagination, ingenuity, energy, verve, and zest for life which David Field, Class of 1964, exemplified while living with his fellow students at Carleton.” That is indeed the Dave Field we knew.
Comments
I think that the words that best describe Dave "The Sleepy Fox" Field are enthusiasm and manic enterprise. He was always looking for something new, non-conventional, and innovative, and he threw himself completely into everything he did. He also made it a cardinal rule to have fun doing it. For instance: --In high school in Harrison NY, Dave found that he could empty his school by phoning in a false bomb threat (he got caught). --In freshman year on First Davis, among his projects was a barely-legal AM radio transmitter, with a definitely-not-legal antenna of magnet wire that went around the room; he played rock 'n' roll music, interspersed with gleeful chortles of "There's KRUD on your dial!," and helped coordinate the attempt to blow the Davis plumbing with synchronized flushes (fortunately, it didn't work). --He and Frank Perlroth '63 had a noon show on KARL (then broadcasting carrier-current just to the campus), playing rock 'n' roll. He delighted in tormenting Garrick Utley '61, trying to break him up on-air by blowing in his ears and goofing around during newscasts. --Frank and Dave later founded Records Unlimited, which provided the campus with cheap vinyl, to the great dismay of the local record store. --Legend has it that he bought a large economy box of condoms and retailed them one-by-one to Carls who didn't want to do their own shopping of that nature. --As Treasurer of the Carleton Student Association, he negotiated a deal for the campus soft-drink machines that restricted choice (to some grumbling, as I recall) but returned much more profit to CSA. (Legend again has it that he salted the machines with the occasional beer bottle to encourage sales.) CSA ran a surplus under Dave, and he did similar service as Business Manager of The Carletonian. After Carleton, Dave went to Harvard Business School. He spent a summer with Frank doing undercover market research for a gasoline company, hanging around freeway gas stations, pretending to survey motorists, and secretly noting how much gas the stations were selling. Also during this time, he did an internship with a British kitchen-appliance manufacturer (stuffy and old-fashioned, he thought). From London, he hopped over the Channel, the Mediterranean and the Sahara to visit Jamie Thomson '64, by then a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zinder, Niger. Jamie remembers that visit: "We hitchhiked south to Kano in Northern Nigeria, then further south to Kaduna, to catch a ride (the Fox was a confirmed railroad buff) on the eastern trunk line of the Nigerian national railways running down to Port Harcourt (through territory that would a few years later become a major theatre of the Biafran war). "At Port Harcourt, on the southeastern coast of Nigeria, we caught a delta ferry to Buguma, where Doug and Barb (Brown) Dewey, both ’64, were in the middle of their two years as PCVs teaching English. Doug had been Dave’s roommate; a major reunion. "Then across the south of Nigeria by bush taxi, through the remains of the country's primeval forest (trees 12' in diameter and 200' tall), and on to the capital, Lagos. There, at the former German embassy on Ikoya, an island in Lagos harbor and the colonial era redoubt of Europeans, we attended a memorable PCV Friday night party. "After a few days in Lagos, on west across Dahomey, Togo and into Ghana, then a new African socialist state. The Fox worked his connections from The Business School to wangle an invitation to a party thrown by Ghanaian and European supporters of then President Kwame Nkrumah (the latter fell in a coup less than six months later). "One week on we'd arrived in Kumasi, seat of a former major West African empire, where another Carleton '64 woman PCV was teaching in a technical school. From there the Fox flew back to the Hub, and I headed back to Zinder for another year's work in an adult literacy program." After The Business School (as he styled it), Dave and a number of colleagues were recruited by a shadowy U.S. government agency--ostensibly the Agency for International Development, but it really wasn't--under threat of being drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam. (This was presumably during the period when Robert McNamara thought that the only thing his war needed was good management, and these graduates would be the best.) This job took him to South Asia--he was based in Lahore, Pakistan--where he picked up some interesting diseases and parasites, and took part in some government work that he didn't talk about. After this, Dave accepted a post marketing blue jeans for Levi Strauss in Australia. His campaign sounded pretty informal--as I recall, it involved Mini Mokes full of young people, and a slogan something like "Down With Pants!" He acquired not only a detailed knowledge of the jeans industry, but an enthusiastic appreciation for colorful Australian idioms, particularly terms like "chunder," "throwing your voice," and "technicolor yawn." Dave met his first wife Susan at the 1967 wedding of friends, and they married in 1970. They lived for a while in the smallest county in California (Dave joked about importing a few friends and taking it over), overseeing a jade grinding operation aimed at producing expensive tiles for an upscale clientele. His workforce consisted largely of pot-smoking California hippies. Dave and Susan then moved to a small town in Vermont. Dave loved small-town life. He worked for a while as a self-taught plumber (using Robertson screws to prevent others' fiddling with his work, and refusing to return to customers who had ignored his previous advice about keeping pipes from freezing). He also owned a printing and office services business, and for a while he built spec houses. He had a local radio show, again mostly playing rock 'n' roll music from the '50s and '60s. He delighted in local town meetings, asking Harvard-MBA questions to surprised big-city consultants who thought they were dealing with rural Yankee hicks. Susan died in the summer of 1975. On the afternoon of his second wedding, in 1976, Dave found himself in the hospital, soon to be diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of blood plasma cells. His new wife gave him no support and went instead for his money, leading to an acrimonious divorce. Dave then met and married Susan Hanewald. He was in remission for a while, and they took a trip to China together. By the time they returned, the remission had ended and he was ill again. He died in June 1983, at the age of 40. The next year, his parents established the David John Field Prize at Carleton, "awarded each year to a member of the senior class whose non-athletic activities best exhibit the qualities of imagination, ingenuity, energy, verve, and zest for life which David Field, Class of 1964, exemplified while living with his fellow students at Carleton." That is indeed the Dave Field we knew.