Dale Charles Reed

A Memorial and Tribute written by Jeff Braswell -

I am sad to report that I was recently informed that Dale Reed passed away on June 27, 2011 from complications of the serious illness that he had been battling the past two years.

Dale, when he was more up to it, before his priorities were changed due to the seriousness of his illness, was a frequent part of the discussion in emails among a loosely-knit group of friends who communicated the 'old-fashioned way' (by today's standards), i.e., via email. His positive approach to life as well as his constructive and considerate manner of discussing and trying to solve contemporary challenges and issues which face us all were greatly appreciated, as one and all would readily attest.

Dale was a lifelong friend, beginning from the early years of the 1960s when our houses shared a back picket fence in Arlington, Virginia. His nickname was Tinker, and he was in fact constantly tinkering with all manner of things, including the Model A Ford that he and his father, Captain Dale Reed Sr., U.S. Navy (retired) lovingly maintained. He was a skilled photographer early on, and ran a full-scale darkroom during high school in the basement of his parents' house on Illinois Street in Arlington.

Dale, along with David Gustafson and myself, played guitar and sang in what, in retrospect, was one of the original garage bands of the era, The Villagers. With only two guitars and drums (Gus), we somehow managed to play all the hits, from Stones to Beatles to Simon and Garfunkel to the Kingsmen, fresh off the hot wax. I have fond memories of the three of us hopping in our cars at the end of a school day and hustling down the Spout Run Parkway in Arlington to head across the Memorial Bridge in order to provide the entertainment for an afternoon TGIF party at an apartment packed full of co-ed revelers invited by GW University frat -- we were a smash hit, and it was perhaps our finest hour !

Dale was not really a student of the guitar -- I would frequently have to shout out the chord changes to him on such basic songs as Long Green by the Kingsmen (" F ! " ), but he was a natural performer and was, as in all things in his life, undaunted and up to any challenge -- nothing ventured, nothing gained. Dale attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and ended up playing extremely capable drums in a successful local blues band, all the while managing to keep his majoring in Business Administration secret from his coterie of adoring fans (and perhaps even band members).

After graduation from college, I lost track of Dale, as often occurred "back in the day" before there was even a 411 telephone information directory service, much less the Internet. One day, thirty years later, after registering at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas, which I was attending in order to try to land a website development deal with SONY, I was walking on an empty sidewalk between the registration building and the main conference hall, deep in thought about what to accomplish at the conference, someone walked past me in the opposite direction. After walking another 10 paces, still focused on mulling over my plans for the conference, my subconscious managed to interrupt my thoughts with the name on large print on the name tag of the person who had walked by me, and of whom I took no notice. "Dale Reed", I said to myself, " I know a Dale Reed". After a few more steps, I turned around, and as we were at this point some 30 feet away, and shouted "Dale Reed ?". He stopped, and turned around, and we approached each other. "Yes, I'm Dale Reed", he said. "Do I know you?" As I did not have my name badge on yet, and he did not recognize me, I played the little guessing game of 'where do you know me from'. "Previous conference?" he asked. Nope. I said ... before that. "College?", he continued. Nope again ... try before that. "High school ??". Yep. Still, no clue. I asked him about the members of The Villagers. "Jeff Braswell ??? You look completely different -- I would have *never* recognized you !" True enough, after being a mere wisp of a lad at 150 pounds and 6 feet tall in high school, and on the lightweight crew at Princeton, where I continued to average around 160 pounds, I had gained a bit too many pounds and lost the long hair and beard since our if-we-only-knew-what-we-know-now 'Chariots of Fire' post-adolescent days.

In the ten years since, Dale and I stayed in frequent contact. Dale was the leader and moderator of annual discussion of current issues which he conducted among his extended family, called the Chickering Cottage Concords , a process that culminated in the group coming to a collective consensus, or at least majority decision, at the family's annual summer retreat at the cottage of the same name which they maintain in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Dale innocently but perhaps foolishly invited me to participate in one of the annual events, but after I had replied-all to his entire extended family's mailing list on a topic of some interest to me at the time ("global warming" ! ), I think he probably regretted doing so, despite the measured, considerate, and objective manner in which I made my points ( ! ). Over the course of many years of conducting, managing, eliciting, and moderating the Chickering Cottage Concords, Dale and his family colloquium tackled many debated and challenging problems of modern life, always with a focus of what and how we could collectively discuss and constructively address, in a civil and respectful fashion, the multiple sides of complex issues, all the while with the goal of using that collective process to identify the best ideas and potential solutions to the topic at hand.

When, in 2004, my daughter Ariel decided to go back to school and get a Masters in Public Health, she pulled up her temporary roots of 8 years in Manhattan and chose to attend UCLA. Her first task was to find an apartment in Santa Monica. As this was a process that could take some time -- weeks or more -- the prospects of staying in a hotel or motel for that amount of time was a potentially considerable expense, and both Ariel and I did not want her taking the first place that came along, or one that was neither safe nor pleasant. Upon hearing of Ariel's pending move, Dale and his wife Gayle very graciously invited Ariel to stay with them in their spacious Thousand Oaks home until such time as she had located and secured an acceptable and affordable place to stay. I joined Ariel the first week of her search -- we would avoid 101 and 405 and drive over the mountains to the Pacific Coast Highway, down to Malibu, and on to Santa Monica for a day of apartment hunting, and then repair back to Dale and Gayle's for a delicious dinner in a sumptuous setting, sitting around the pool with the daily dose of an "inch of Pinch" and talking about the events of the day. Dale and Gayle's son Dustin was also staying at the house at the time, and -- marvel of marvels -- had a drum kit set up in the garage ! Déja vu all over again. After the week of my helping Ariel get oriented with the territory, and enjoying hanging out with her on our daily rounds, I left Ariel at the Reeds to continue her search, which, by virtue of their wonderful hospitality, she was able to accomplish in a relaxed and successful fashion. That was one of the more enjoyable weeks of my life, and was just a slice of Dale and Gayle's warm and magnanimous spirit. I recall with especial fondness the drives that Dale would take me on in his Miata convertible around the back roads of the mountains between Thousand Oaks and the coast, the radio blasting away as we cruised in the warm winds of summer, talking about things far and wide, old and current.

I was pleased to be invited to, and happy to be able to attend, the wedding of Dale's daughter Lindsey in Sonoma in 2006. It was a great chance to reconnect with the rest of Dale's family - parents and siblings as well as children -- after the many years which had intervened since the high school days of the sixties in Arlington. It was also my great pleasure to have Dale and Gayle join us at Ariel's wedding in Sonoma the following year, in 2007. (Dale the Photographer was still "in the house", getting some great shots of my father cutting the rug out on the dance floor ).

Rounding out the wedding trifecta, it was my great honor and pleasure to have Dale be one of my groomsmen at the wedding of Machiko and I at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite almost exactly one year ago today. Dale had already been diagnosed with his illness, and had also recovered from a very major surgical operation to deal with the first vestiges of the disease. The celebration that day was a truly wonderful and special event, in no small part because of the great opportunity to enjoy the magnificent gathering of family and friends spanning the full range and spectrum of my life. Save for my parents, my sister, and my cousin Ken, the person who I had known longer than any other person at that grand celebration was none other than Dale Reed !

In living, and loving, memory,

-Jeff Braswell '66