02/14/2019
Dave Werts celebrating his 80th birthday on Aug. 10, 2015 on the deck of the Queen Mary with the Long Beach skyline in the background. (Courtesy of the Werts family)
By Rich Archbold | rarchbold@scng.com | Press-Telegram
PUBLISHED: February 15, 2019 at 4:53 pm | UPDATED: February 15, 2019
Dave and Melanie Werts on New Year’s Eve 2018 at a restaurant party with longtime friends, Rich and Pat Archbold, and other friends. He died on Valentine’s Day, 2019. (Photo by Pat Archbold)
This is one column I had hoped I wouldn’t be writing anytime soon.
It is about a dear friend and neighbor, Dave Werts, who passed away on Valentine’s Day after a grueling battle with prostate cancer that had spread into his bone marrow.
The last time my wife and I saw Dave he was wearing a silly hat on New Year’s Eve. Our get together was an annual ritual of many years with other longtime friends to welcome in the new year.
Stating our resolutions for the new year became a part of that tradition. I wrote them down inside a party hat so they could be reviewed – with a lot of laughter – the next year.
At our 2017 party, we were all dismayed when Dave announced that his prostate cancer had come back after five years. But the cancer had gone into remission before and we were hopeful it would again.
This time, however, the cancer turned out to be a rarer form and more aggressive. Only 3 percent of prostate cancers were of the kind Dave had. He endured blood transfusions and other medications to try to hold off the disease.
At our last New Year’s Eve get together, Dave was a little frail, but he was in incredibly good spirits despite the dour medical prognosis.
“I feel pretty good, considering everything,” he told us. Ever optimistic, he said his resolutions for the new year included cleaning up the clutter in his home office. He also resolved to finish his memoirs in an autobiography he had been working on for years.
After fighting long and hard with his cancer, it was a massive brain hemorrhage that finally defeated Dave in the end, according to his wife of 46 years, Melanie.
“We had a lovely evening Wednesday, sharing a nice bottle of wine and ending with our usual good night kiss and I love you,” she said.
But Dave had a relapse early the next morning on Valentine’s Day, and he was rushed to the emergency room at Long Beach Memorial Hospital.
“He was in a coma, but I was able to hold him to say goodbye,” she said. He died a short time later at age 83.
The day after Dave died, my wife, Pat, and I visited with Melanie in their home in El Dorado Park Estates a few blocks from where we live. Every day, I would go by their home on the way to work and tap a silent salute to them on my car horn.
Neighbors
Our friendship actually began with our wives in 1982 when their oldest son, Tavis, and our oldest daughter, Kelly, were in the same kindergarten class at Newcomb Elementary. Just by luck, Melanie and my wife chose the same day of the week to volunteer in their classroom. Our friendship grew from there.
Our second daughter, Katie, and Dave’s second son, Brandon, were both born in 1980 and went to Newcomb together. In those early years Dave’s sons and their friends called Dave “The Wizard” because of his gray beard and mustache and the fact that he had a mysterious job at the aerospace company, TRW.
Born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, on Aug. 10, 1935, Dave had aeronautical engineering degrees from Iowa State University and the University of Minnesota. For years, Dave couldn’t talk about anything he did at TRW because his work was classified for defense reasons.
Only years later – when the projects were declassified – did Dave reveal that some of his work involved analyzing data from spy satellites, Tavis told us.
“He was truly a rocket scientist; he just couldn’t talk about a lot of what he did,” Melanie said. In one of our last visits together, we all joked about how he would be taking those job secrets to the grave. It just happened too soon.
Dave was great to be around. He was super smart and could talk about anything. He was even-tempered and was a calming influence no matter how hot discussions would get on certain issues.
“He never raised his voice to me or anyone, and I never heard him say anything unkind about anyone,” Melanie said.
He loved jazz, Stan Kenton being one of his favorites. He played the trombone in his high school’s marching band and then in the Iowa State Marching Band. The trombone rests silently in his home now.
He also was on the board of the Jazz Angels, a nonprofit helping youngsters play and appreciate jazz. He was well-versed on fine wine, especially French reds. He developed a taste for wine while working in Europe for several years. Some of those bottles made