On September 22, 2024, we gathered to remember my stepfather, David Sterling North. We’ve set up a website with photos and remembrances: www.davidnorthmemorial.com which has most of the eulogies including the below. Posting separately here for my five or six loyal readers who may not have attended.

One note: for the service, I removed the paragraph about my gratitude to David for including my father in his life. I did this out of concern that it would be viewed as judgmental of situations that have not evolved in the same direction. It’s back in this version is it really is a remarkable testament to David, my mother, Ruth Blau, and my father, Peter Robertson, and the family they created.

My tribute to David:

It can’t be easy to be a step-parent, but David nailed it. He never tried to be my father – I already had one of those – but instead was a wise and supportive elder throughout my adult life.

I think it helped that we were both giant nerds. 

David became my step-father when I was a sophomore in college, so he missed out the annoying-adolescent years that my parents had to suffer through. So I don’t have childhood memories of David but rather memories sitting around our dining room table on visits or holidays, talking about whatever was in the news or whatever one of us was working on or arguing (gently, respectfully ) about immigration policy. 

He always wanted to hear about my latest case, and would follow along with intelligent, interested questions – good preparation for when I’d have to explain the whole thing to a judge. That connection through curiosity is a theme so many of my memories of David. For example, when I was in college, one friend – who had recently been to visit our home – warned another to be sure to know who her congressman was, as David would almost certainly ask her on the next visit. 

I think anyone who has been in conversation with David will remember the twinkle in his eye when he had an interesting fact to explain. He clearly took joy in knowing things and in gaining and sharing knowledge about a wide range of topics.

And using that vast knowledge, his double-black-diamond-level research skills, and boundless energy, David took on many Goliaths. He’d dig into some reasonably obscure information source to uncover, expose, and attack abuses of power. From time to time, he would loop me in with emails that would start, “I think this would be a good class action lawsuit . . .” He would proceed to describe how his research had revealed some way in which some big guy was exploiting some little guy and then ask to brainstorm whether we could use the tools of the legal system to attack the problem.

These issues included – couple of examples over the years:  

• Pregnant garment workers in Saipan being exploited by large garment companies. If you’ve been to Ruth and David’s house you may have seen the Doonesbury cartoon on the subject, signed to him by Garry Trudeau.
• Abuse of a charter school system by a Turkish cult.
• The corrupt system for unclaimed funds in Georgia, which (shockingly) favored the large company debtors rather than the individuals owed money. 
• David’s last legal email to me came just three weeks before he passed, asking me to connect him to a lawyer who could assist an abused woman in California.

Though I never personally took on any of these cases – most were far outside my field – on several occasions I was able to connect him with attorneys to investigate the claims or make other, back-channel connections. David was always willing to work levers of power and knowledge behind the scenes. 

I’ll add – in the “we’re both giant nerds” department – we often bonded over – and shared tips for using – the PACER system, that is, the federal court system’s online docket. He was one of the only non-lawyers I knew who had his own PACER account – and assiduously tracked cases, large and small, against various Goliaths.   

Shaun Pennington, whose words Rodney just read, described David’s “superpowers: pen, intelligence, experience, trustworthiness and well-deserved respect.” I offer a friendly amendment: that’s a metaphorical pen – this David’s slingshot was his typewriter. The photos include several, from his old portable manual to the post-it covered monitor he used until a day or two before his death.  And my favorite photo:  David exploring a Chinese typewriter when he and my mother came to visit me in Taiwan. 

David and Ruth loved to travel – you’ll see in the photo montage a number of pictures from their travels. In fact, one of the things I noticed as I gathered and compiled the photos was their smiles:  Ruth and David clearly took immense joy in each other’s presence, whether traveling in China, Australia, the Philippines, or the Caribbean; or gathering for a meal with our wonderful, weird, ad-hoc family; or preparing lunch together in their Arlington kitchen.  Just as much as I celebrate David today, I also celebrate their wonderful, devoted, 45-year marriage.

And about that ad hoc family – I will always be grateful to David for the three additional brothers I gained through his marriage to my mother and for his willingness to welcome my father into his life and home. My parents separated in 1973 and by the late 1970s – a year or so into Ruth and David’s marriage – my father Peter was joining the crew on Kensington Street for Thanksgivings and Christmases and other random gatherings.  I’m grateful to all three of them for that. 

To hijack the words and metaphor of Buckminster Fuller – and trust me, I would not have known this but for the work of my friend Unyong Kim – David was a trim-tab. That is a very small piece of metal on the edge of a ship’s rudder that can change the direction of a very large ship. Fuller himself used it as a metaphor for the impact one individual can have on society’s problems. David, through all of his work, large and small, had an outsized impact on so many lives – and specifically mine, as a wonderful, smart, supportive stepfather. Miss you very much, David.