Wendy's Message

You may be asking yourself, who is she to be speaking? Well, my name is Wendy Marshall-Hudzik and I was a friend of Dave’s. I was born a Chelmsford Center girl who was turned into a N.Chelmsford wanna be. Some of my best friends to this day were raised in “North.” I first met them along with Dave in Jr. High when the center kids got thrown in with the kids from the “capital.” Dave looked like every other pre-pubescent boy in my eyes at the time but he was always smiling and so sweet. We girls would meet up at Frosty’s drug store for a nickel root beer and whatever else we could afford, then hang around the square to watch the older boys go by. By the end of our freshman year Dave was really shaping up to be a fine-looking guy and still as sweet as ever. It was always a pleasure to meet him in the halls of CHS. Between our sophomore and junior years we had the first of many great summers! Hanging around in N.Chelmsford-We girls (the names withheld to protect the guilty) would hunt down someone with their license and a car to drive us around (mostly Gooch, God bless him! I bet I still owe him money for gas). Some nights we’d meet up with others at the Ledge. Ah the Ledge-that was our secret place (not) where we would sit, listen to the car radios, maybe dance (well I did, anyway) and swat mosquitoes. There would be maybe 5 or 6 guys and maybe 3 or 4 girls-no “couples”, just buddies. On occasion we would see headlights coming up the road. Knowing we really weren’t supposed to be there, and leaving no evidence behind we would run and hide in the trunks of the cars, leaving a couple of boy & girl teams to pretend they were parking, there were no submarines in the quarry- and the cops knew it but they’d just say to move along and wait for us to leave.

I was always one of the ones stuck in the trunk and never got to pretend to be parking, but Dave never got stuck in the trunk.
One night we were cruising around in that famous green ’61 Chevy, at least 5 girls in the back, Gooch and Dave in the front, all of a sudden at a stop sign Dave jumps out of the car and starts running. Gooch not wanting to draw any attention kept up beside Dave saying “Dave get in the car! Dave come on get in the car!” Then we girls chimed in “David get in the car. Come on David get in the car.” Dave said after about a mile “I can’t, I can’t I have to run off that Colt 45”!
Well, Dave just kept running and working out for the rest of high school making us classmates very proud of his athletic accomplishments! By the end of our Junior year he was very, very popular with the girls (it even says under his high school photo …..an all girl study) yet he was so humble. His popularity never changed his sweet, kind, gentle ways. I’m not even sure he knew how popular he was. He seemed to always have a “steady” but always a man’s man. You know the old adage “you’re known by the company you keep” well the group of guys he hung around with were a great group and have mostly kept in pretty close contact all these years. I would meet up with Dave through the years out and about and he always made me feel like I was the only person in the world he wanted to see! Always the best hugs! Very sincere in inquiring how my life was going.

At our class reunions that we’ve had every 5 years- of which he attended most-Dave always was seen smiling with everyone around him, unassuming still of his popularity.
Now, I like to think of relationships like jeans ( you guys might not get this but I think the girls will understand) jeans don’t always fit right, they may look good, they be practical or comfortable but if they’re not PERFECT for YOU then you just don’t feel good in them. I knew when I saw Dave at our 35th class reunion that he was feeling those perfectly fit jeans, the kind you could live in forever! He was gleaming! He told me he had married and all about this beautiful woman I saw with him and how overjoyed he was in having her in his life. I was so happy for him!
I had some reason to call their house soon after the reunion and got to visit with Kathy, she also told me of how happy she was and how wonderful she thought Dave was. Again, I was thrilled that she had the feeling of the perfectly fit jeans!
Too soon after that reunion there was word that Dave had Multiple Myeloma. No one could believe it- he was such a physically fit person. When the fundraiser was put on for him he never got over all the people that showed up to support him and Kathy- (to this day I don’t think anyone could get over how many friends were there) and he was so appreciative!
Again, so humble, he still didn’t know how popular he was.
I feel so blessed in having stayed in closer touch these past couple years. He and I had some wonderful, humorous and philosophical phone conversations, along with shared emails.

I could go on and on about the wonderful man Dave was and what a great example and representative of CHS and of course N.Chelmsford but I think this crowd shows his legacy-to have a friend= be a friend.