He attended Smylie Wilson Junior High and was a 1963 graduate of Monterey High School. At Monterey, he played fullback for the football team and served as Senior Class President. After high school, he enrolled at Texas Tech where he met the love of his life, Paula Jane. They married in 1966. In 1968, they had their first child, J Hunter. At the time, David was a shoe salesman at JC Penney. With a growing family to care for, he went to an employment agency where they placed him in a job with CIT Loans, and thus began a career in banking that spanned nearly a half century. With his career in place, they had two more children, Spencer David in 1974 and Evan Elizabeth in 1977.
David’s career took him from Plains National Bank, where he was tasked with coordinating the construction of the building at 50th and University, to Amarillo where he worked for American National Bank, and then back to Lubbock, where he worked at Lubbock National Bank. He eventually returned to Plains, which had become Plains Capital. He loved working in that same building he helped make possible. He briefly tried retirement, but the call and service of community banking drew him immediately back.
This began his final and happiest post as the Lubbock Chairman for Happy State Bank. Throughout his life, he loved the Lubbock community and Texas Tech. His life philosophy was “Service above self”. He displayed this by his continued involvement in numerous boards and organizations, including Covenant Hospital, the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech, the South Plains Council of the Boy Scouts of America, Lubbock Country Club, United Way, March of Dimes and many more.
He is survived by his wife, Paula, his son Hunter of Craig, Colorado, his son Spencer of Taos, New Mexico, and his daughter Evan Sanford of Lubbock, their spouses Sharyn, Sophia, and Michael, and seven grandchildren, Wyatt, Amelia, Abigail, Olivia, Ivo, Isaiah, and Sarah.
A celebration of life will be held at 2:30PM, Thursday at Trinity Church in Lubbock.
