David Lay

David Clark Lay, 77, passed away peacefully in his sleep on Friday, October 12, 2018, after a long and courageous battle with Alzheimer's. While no words can adequately capture who this amazing man was or his life, his family desires to share highlights of his story as best as they can.

Family:

David Clark Lay was born on March 1st, 1941 to L. Clark and Florence R. Lay in Los Angeles, CA. He became a big brother to his lifelong best friend when Steven was born in 1944. As a young man, he enjoyed magic tricks, music, and marching band. In middle school, he acknowledged his need for Jesus' gift of forgiveness and committed his life and work to God. David graduated from John Muir High School in 1958, earned a B.A. from Aurora University in Illinois in 1962, and went on to graduate studies at UCLA where he pursued his passion and gifting for mathematics. After completing the Ph.D. program at UCLA in 3 ½ years, Dr. Lay moved across the country to begin a nearly 43-year professorship at the University of Maryland in College Park. He joined Riverdale Baptist Church and met his young bride, Lillian Collins. Three years later, the 29-year-old professor married the 21-year-old college student. David and Lillian enjoyed year-long sabbatical stays in Holland and Germany and traveling to England and Austria and the surrounding countries. After 8 years of marriage, countless prayers were answered in 1978 when they were allowed to adopt their first daughter, Christina. God then blessed them again with Deborah one year later and Melissa in 1985. While the family enjoyed many activities and vacations together over the years, David's favorite trips were when he took his family to Europe in 1990 and 1999. Through the course of time, David and Lillian welcomed their sons-in-law into the family and now have 6 beautiful grandchildren.

Passions:

Everyone who befriended David knew him to be committed to mathematics, but first and foremost he was and is remembered as a man deeply in love with and devoted to his wife, Lillian. Unwavering in commitment, he loved her fiercely and eternally. She made him feel strong and needed, gave him confidence and consistent encouragement. Her words and attention had a way of making him come alive and he was adamant that he could not have done anything of value without her. For years, he delighted in making a weekly stop to buy her flowers, usually before the previous bouquet had begun to wilt. He loved her with all his heart and loved raising their family together.

David was passionate about mathematics and studied it constantly. He dedicated much of his career to the art of teaching mathematics effectively and in a way that would inspire even those previously apathetic or hostile to math. His father had also been a math professor, as is his brother, Steven. The compulsion to study more sometimes led his daughters to demand that his books be left at home while on vacation. Nevertheless, he is remembered by hundreds of students as a most excellent, kind, sometimes silly, and enthusiastic math professor.

David also loved music. As a passion that started with learning piano as a boy and grew to singing and playing the trombone as a man, music. His family has fond memories of singing together, and when his daughters were growing up, they would sometimes play together -- Christina on the flute, Debbie on the violin, Melissa on the piano and David on the trombone. He also loved to play music with his brother, Steven, especially when their father could join in on the banjo. If a song he liked came on in the car, on an elevator, in a meeting, in a store, he could not help himself - he would start singing the bass or baritone part even if he didn't know the words. Music became an anchor in David's life, especially as his memories and faculties started to suffer during his last years. His fingers would still play old hymns, ballads or love songs on the piano, filling a quiet nursing home with harmony and nostalgia and bringing joy to all who heard him play.

As his relationship with God developed beyond religion, he learned to take God at his word and trust him above human reasoning. When David set out to author his first textbook, he knew his own limitations in the skill of writing and that textbooks have a historically horrible success rate, so he entrusted God with his work and his life verse became Proverbs 16:3: "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established." He also took to heart these two passages: Malachi 3:10 that says to test God with giving "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it." and Matthew 6:19-20, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." David believed these truths and that God was the one in control of the book's success, so he promised to give a significant percentage of any royalties back to Him. The Lord proved faithful, and the more David and Lillian gave, the more the Lord gave them to give. Spirit-led giving provided David and Lillian with years of fun and joy. Lillian often heard him say, "We don't get to keep it unless we give it away."

Work:

Over the course of his career, David worked diligently as an educator and research mathematician, authoring several textbooks in functional analysis, calculus and linear algebra and continually testing his material and methods in his classrooms to improve his work for countless editions. He served as a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, the Free University in Amsterdam, and the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. He published more than 30 research articles of functional analysis and linear algebra, and earned four university awards for teaching excellence, including the 1996 title of Distinguished Scholar-Teacher of the University of Maryland. He was elected by students to membership in Alpha Lambda Delta National Scholastic Honor Society and Golden Key National Honor society. In 1989, Aurora University conferred on him the Outstanding Alumnus award. He was a member of the American Mathematical Society, the Canadian Mathematical Society, the International Linear Algebra Society, the Mathematical Association of America, Sigma Xi, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He also served several terms on the national board of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences, and was the Associate Dean for UMD's College of Mathematical Sciences from 2007 to 2009.

With the help of his brother, Steven R. Lay, and Judi J. McDonald since 2011, David's Linear Algebra and Its Applications textbook continues to be the number one selling textbook of its kind in the world and has been translated into several languages.

Legacy:

David Lay's life demonstrated that great intelligence and logic can not only co-exist with faith, but that they enhance each other by design. A world beyond the temporal was opened up to him and he leaves behind a lasting legacy. Because he did not live for himself, his life and generosity continues to impact people all over the world. Because he made an effort to submit his will under the will of his Heavenly Father, his character was refined over the years, and his family is able to remember him with these words: generous, gentle genius, driven, dedicated, distinguished, brilliant, bold, honest, kind, compassionate, Christ follower, loving, loyal, leader, listener, faithful, father, friend.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the

Lay Family Mathematics Assistantship at Lee University.

You may mail a check written to Lee University with "Lay Family Math Assistantship"

in the memo line to Lee University, Central Gifts, P. O. Box 3450,

Cleveland, TN 37320-3450.