David Ronald Irwin ’68

David Ronald Irwin ’68 passed away unexpectedly at his family home in Beaufort, South Carolina, on April 26. David was born in Hamburg, New York, where he was valedictorian of his high school class and worked summers in a steel plant to help pay his College expenses. At Dartmouth he majored in English and was a member of Tau Epsilon Phi. He received a master’s in education from Keene State (1972) and briefly taught English and math at New Ipswich High School, where he met and married Anne-Marie McGovern. He loved to read and learn and built a home for his wife and two sons from a book on carpentry. Although mostly a hobby, he was described as a “newspaper man of the oldest sort.” He owned a local paper, edited another, and later became a columnist, using a typewriter well after 2000. A fellow journalist at the Peterborough Transcript described him as “a wonderful mentor to a young journalist” with a legendary sense of humor. He also owned and grew a handful of other successful businesses. For the past 15 years David and Anne-Marie spent winters in South Carolina’s Low Country, where David came to love the peace and slow-moving rivers. He enjoyed the full-length screened porch, where he could see across the sprawling lawn to the treehouse in the live oak, the dock, and wide river beyond. David leaves behind Anne-Marie, sons Josh and Andrew and their wives, and five grandchildren who called him “PopPop.”