My Brother, David, Passed Onward in January

David and Franny

In January, my brother, David Puett, fell from a ladder onto the concrete driveway while trimming a tree. Mercifully, he lost brain function immediately and never regained consciousness. His organs were donated and saved the lives of three other people on the day he passed over.

We all agree that it was a strange occurrence for David to die during an accident, as he was known to be an especially cautious and safety-minded guy. He had been trimming this particular flowering mulberry for 45 years without mishap. Then he popped outside on a sunny afternoon to trim just one branch. A couple of minutes later, he was gone.

David was a frequent contributor to the Simple Explanation blog in its formative days.  You will see his comments on articles involving cosmology, astronomy, and physics. He understood entropy like nobody's business.  

David was a lifelong learner and teacher. He, along with me and my other brother, Bill, was driven by curiosity about the natural world and a desire to share its wonders with others. He was a natural philosopher and a lover of God. He was thrilled when the internet came along because David liked nothing better than to research into the wee hours of the night, with only the glow of his laptop lighting the dark.

Of the tens of thousands of sets of eyeballs that have read Simple Explanation articles here over the years, David was one of probably no more than a handful of people who thoroughly grasped what he was reading. Without his support and Bill's, I'd have felt pretty alone here.

It was quite an honor to be David's sister at his memorial. People said such great things about him, about his dry sense of humor, about his generosity and his unbounded helpfulness.  He was a good man whose character improved with age.  I felt very proud of him.

Here's the obituary his wife and kids had printed in the newspaper:

David went to be with our Lord after a sudden accident but he saved three lives donating organs. Survivors include his wife Barbara, daughters Krista Puett & Brooke Fuentes, grandchildren Joshua Puett and Emma Fuentes, and his brother Bill Puett and sister Cyd Ropp. He met his wife at UCLA then completed his MBA. He was successful in banking and then became a much requested and respected substitute teacher. He loved God and helping others. He had a passion for serving children in Malawi and Brazil, creating toys for his grandchildren, fixing anything and everything, and caring for his family as a jack-of-all trades.