April 26, 1940 – February 24, 2022

A resident of East Machias, Maine, Dave Warren passed away suddenly at the age of 81 on Thursday, February 24.

The son of the late George M. Warren and the late Florence E. Warren, Dave was born and raised in northern New Jersey. Dave attended Lafayette College and graduated in 1962 with a B.A. in history. He is survived by his daughter, Susan Warren of Whittier, North Carolina: his son, G. Matthew Warren of Washington D.C.; his brother, Donald T. Warren of Lakewood, New Jersey; two grandchildren, Erin Zwick and Julie Zwick; his former spouse Roberta Warren; his beloved cats, Chloe, Snickers, Archie, and Kitten; and his beloved dog, also named Julie.  Many of his pets — Betsy, Katie, Stinky, Ben, Cindy, Scooter, Chloe, Albert, Blackie, Sassy, Lucy, BabyCat, Carmella, and Fred, the Spider — preceded him in death.

To know Dave was to hear humorous stories from his life.  The collars of his shirts had to be “just so” (though often spattered with paint), but he explained his life to others as a series of pratfalls and misunderstandings because that’s how he seemingly made sense of the world.  For example, he briefly had a job delivering water in his 30s.  (He spent most of his career in insurance, but office work limited his opportunities for misadventure.)  All went well his first week until he tried to return to the delivery truck after dropping off water at an address, only to discover that the truck had rolled backwards down a hill, across a busy street, and into a carwash.  The local newspaper documented the incident with a picture of the vehicle partly embedded in the carwash, and it appeared as if the truck was there to fill up with more water.  Dave nonetheless managed to avoid termination for several days.  The final straw was when Dave attempted to deliver water to a church and misjudged an overhang, which peeled the top of the truck off “like a sardine can.”  Afterwards, Dave’s boss asked him to guess what the boss would have to do next.  “Fire me?” proffered Dave.  “Exactly,” said the boss, “but we will hire you back if we ever get big enough to have both drivers and delivery men.  You’re a hard worker.”

Dave was also an avid skier.  A ski instructor and share-holder in the Mad River Glen Co-Operative in Vermont, he was in it not just for the skiing but also for the stories, of course, and the morning sticky buns and coffee in mid-mountain lodges.  Until his dying day, he cursed the “wedges” installed under his bindings on the advice of a ski shop before the first day of his skiing season in 1985.  Though he was “decked out like Jean-Claude Killy” and an expert skier at the time, the wedges rendered him unable to ski and, on his starting run of the day, sent him tumbling down the black-diamond slope and ultimately through the lift line and over the embankment on the other side.  

Famous in East Machias for the purple kit-car Ferrari—a/k/a “the Fauxrrari”—often parked in his driveway, Dave took great pride in volunteering at the Machias Food Pantry, and he enjoyed the network of friends he developed there and throughout the community.  Dave’s family encourages donations in his honor to The Machias Food Pantry at the Centre Street Congregational Church, PO Box 265, Machias, Maine, 04654.  

Dave’s memorial will be at the Centre Street Congregational Church in July.