David Stephen Kales

David Kales passed away on April 4, 2015 after a long and courageous struggle with multiple illnesses. He was in his final days the same hopeful and engaging person his family and friends knew him to be throughout his life. His last hours were spent peacefully with Emily, his loving wife of nearly 50 years, by his side. In addition to Emily, he leaves his son, Matthew, and two grandchildren: Eli (10) and Annabel (8) both of whom remember their PeePaw as “the best grandfather in the world.”

David was a true son of New England, born in Boston and raised in Belmont where his family played an active role in that town’s civic affairs and helped establish Temple Beth-El. David attended Belmont High School, where he ran track and played basketball, competing in a state tournament at the Boston Garden. He received his BA in Government from Harvard University (Class of 1961), where he studied under Henry Kissinger and developed a life-long interest in foreign affairs, an interest that would take him to the Soviet Union as part of the first delegation of American university students to visit there during the Cold War. That same interest would lead him to Columbia University where he earned an MBA and more importantly met his future wife Emily, and then to Hong Kong on a Carnegie Foundation grant in the late 1960s to study Chinese language and report for the Hearst Newspaper chain on the ever-widening regional conflicts in Southeast Asia. David’s work during this time put him on the front lines of some of his generation’s most controversial foreign policy issues as he reported from key battle zones in Vietnam, and he was among the first journalists to write about US military involvement in Cambodia and Laos.

David and Emily returned to the United States in 1970, where they brought Matthew into the world and where David furthered his career in journalism, working for Newsweek and other major magazines based in New York City. The pull of New England and his connection to the region was strong, however, and soon after David returned to the United States he brought his family back to Massachusetts, settling first in Cambridge and then Arlington. David worked for the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources, building a successful public information campaign to support conservation of the state’s coastal habitat. David then moved into the field of business writing, where he was an early innovator, developing products to address the need for a real-time business news and information service for the region’s growing high-technology sector and then serving as a senior editor for Laser Focus World, a leading trade publication serving the global laser industry.

Throughout his journalism career David continued to write books about his other interests, initially co-authoring two books with Emily, one about great artists and their works and another about the Boston Harbor Islands. This latter work, first published in 1976 and revised many times since, remains the definitive popular guide to the natural and human history of the Harbor Islands and is credited with renewing public interest in the islands, culminating in their inclusion in the National Park System. David published a subsequent volume, "The Boston Harbor Islands: A History of an Urban Wilderness". In 2004, David published "The Phantom Pirate", a work of fiction that blended his expert knowledge of the Harbor Islands with his interest in the exploits of notorious Boston crime figure James “Whitey” Bulger. At the time of his death, David was working on his fifth book, a work of fiction based on the life and times of Harriet Quimby, the Boston aviatrix whose plane crashed in Boston Harbor in 1912.

David was an avid Boston Red Sox fan who also maintained a lifelong interest in art history, jazz, and film. He was also a friend to dogs, adopting the family’s first of two golden retrievers from Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue. In his 60s, he took up Korean mixed martial arts, earning a 2nd degree black belt and serving as an ambassador for the discipline to senior citizens. Until he took ill, David traveled widely with Emily to Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and the American West, where he fell in love with the region’s vast landscapes and history.

David was an educated and accomplished man with vast and diverse experience, but held himself no higher than anyone else and easily won the trust and friendship of anyone he met simply by talking with and listening to them. A journalist to the end, his greatest gift was his ability to give people the opportunity to tell their story and making them feel like that story mattered. During his many hospitalizations he “interviewed” the nurses and technicians and even the surgeons who managed his care, always delighting in the human connection that emerged in the process.

Above all, David was a true family man, devoted to his wife, always there for his son, and ever-ready to dote on his grandchildren. He will be greatly missed by those he loved, and by all those fortunate to know this fine and special man.

Click on the link below for the YouTube video of David discussing the history and ecology of the Boston Harbor Islands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBP_yLP7dZk