SHERBORN: David M. Fanger, age 87, a retired teacher and technical writer, and devoted father, died peacefully after a long illness on April 3, 2014. He was the loving husband of Virginia Doan Fanger for 62 years.
Born and raised in Kansas, David was the son of Sylvia Bowyer Altmann and William F. Fanger. He entered the Navy straight from high school and served in the Pacific Theatre during WWII, including deployment to Okinawa after the armistice. Upon returning home he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas and a Master’s degree in English from Indiana University. He had also begun work towards a PhD program at the University of Michigan, though he never completed the degree.
David and Virginia met while both were students at the University of Kansas, and were married in 1951. Soon afterwards, the newlyweds set off to Europe. They bought a couple of used bicycles, and for six months toured the continent, staying at hostels along the way. It was soon after the war, and they met friendly people everywhere, and never lacked for food. After these months in Europe with Virginia, low on funds, David worked briefly with a construction crew in Morocco prior to returning home.
David had taught English while earning his Master’s degree, and in 1960 was hired as an instructor at Wellesley College, where he taught English and American literature until 1962. Notwithstanding his considerable linguistic gifts, David was already becoming interested in the new and still primitive technology of computing, and he soon changed his professional course, taking a job as a technical writer, first at the Grason-Stadler audiotronics corporation, and then moving to join the Digital Equipment Corporation in Marlborough. He remained with DEC until 1985, when he decided to join friends at a multiprocessor start-up company in Wellesley called Encore Computer. His command of the English language allowed him to make valuable contributions to advancing these pioneering technology companies while pursuing his own inventions in a series of increasingly well-equipped basement laboratories.
The Fanger family had settled in Sherborn in 1971. Virginia, an architect, had designed a home for the family which she and David built from the ground up, performing much of the manual labor as well as design work. David’s personal interests in electronics eventually led him to create a variety of innovative electronic inventions including high-performance microphone prototypes that he designed, built and tested in his basement workshops. David had other creative interests as well. He liked music and enjoyed recording performances of his musician friends with the equipment he built. He was also an accomplished amateur photographer, interested in images of nature and landscape subjects, and in the course of pursuing this hobby David invented a new darkroom printing technique as well as experimenting with digital image processing in later years.
David had an excellent reading knowledge of French, and one lifelong ambition was realized after his 1991retirement with a late return to France, where he spent six weeks studying at the American University in Paris, immersing himself in the French language perfecting his ear and his idiom. After this, he taught himself Spanish. He and Virginia traveled frequently after Virginia’s retirement, and he enjoyed practicing his Spanish on native speakers in Peru, Ecuador, and Spain. The couple also traveled to Alaska and Australia, with David capturing many dynamic images of the places they visited.
David is survived by his wife Virginia Doan Fanger and their children, a son, Daniel Fanger and daughter-in-law Leslie Dale Fanger of Princeton, MA; a daughter, Claire Fanger and son-in-law Paul Coyne, currently of Houston, TX; his two grandchildren, Julian and Rachel Coyne, currently of Montreal, Quebec and Oakville Ontario, respectively; and his sister, Mary Honomichl, also of Houston.
A private memorial gathering is planned. Friends wishing to attend please contact Dan Fanger at (978) 333-4046 for date/location.
Donations may be made in David’s memory to the Natick Visiting Nurse Association, 209 West Central Street, Natick, MA 01760. http://www.natickvna.org/