Longtime Mayville resident, David Kern, died on December 31 after a long battle with cancer. Dave's best friends knew him as "Cobby." I have learned since I moved here that if you were born before 1960 and grew up in Mayville your boyhood friends probably gave you a nickname, like Popeye, Brownie, Strookie, Lloydie, Stoney, Hub, Rags, Bumpy, Chickie, Melf, Steinie, Nubbie, Bootsie, Mouse, Fuzzy, Deke, Stick, or Cobby. That's a nice tradition. Better to grow up in a small town where they took the time to give you a decent nickname than in a crowded city where you are little more than a number. I don't know where Dave's nickname of Cobby came from, but you had to love it.
Because I did not know Dave as long or as well as many others, here I bring the perspective of someone who saw him around town and admired him greatly. Dave figured out how to combine work, recreation and community service into one life. How did he do that?
My first experiences with Dave began about 20 years ago, on our local "muni" golf course and at St. Mary's basketball games. Dave was an excellent golfer who would defeat me in Thursday night league matches, always a gentleman on the golf course and never too serious about it. (Yes, we did enjoy a beer while out on the course.) My fondest memories were at the old St. Mary's gym where I first encountered Dave around 1995 as a referee for the grade school games, in which Jack Hurst and I coached. Dave made the calls, but he also gave quick tips to the kids when he blew the whistle at them, showing them how to pivot to avoid a travel, or how to avoid a double dribble call. Dave helped the young players avoid line violations on in-bounds passes, and that wasn't easy because the line along the length of our little court was about a foot from where the fans were sitting. Other refs like Nubbie Dornfeld, and Melf and Dale Gourlie (also a co-worker at MEC) helped the kids in the same way, but Nubbie, Melf and Dale would tell you that the kids really listened to Dave. Well, they had to look up to him. He was tall and wiry, and I'm sure they saw him as a giant. But for these children his gift was that he was kind and gentle.
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Dave Kern Duck hunting with Maddy
Credit: Koepsell Funeral Home obit |
Dave Kern saw a lot of Mayville history over his 60 years, and worked at Mayville Engineering Company (MEC) for 40 of them. After he got sick he just kept working. The word "disability" was not part of his vocabulary. As the obit says, Dave was MEC's reloader division Sales/Customer Service Manager. The origin of the MEC shotshell reloader product is a huge manufacturing-hunting Mayville story, which I can't get into here.
Dave represented MEC at outdoor trade events where he would present
the MEC product around the country. He met my brother Jim from Madison, who was
selling sportsmen knives for some company, at one of those events and Jim gets back and calls me asking,
“Who was that great guy from Mayville that I met at the sports show in Vegas?” Dave had gone out of his way to go up to
Jim and make conversation with him, because he could tell (we look alike) that
he was my brother, and of course Dave as always wanted to be friendly. Dave was not for himself. He was always reaching out, as he did here with Jim whom he had never
met.
I can't think of a better ambassador that a company could have than Dave Kern. With this job with the MEC reloader division he could take his passion for hunting into the workplace. Away from work he loved to hunt with his black lab, Maddy, whom you see here with Dave.
The beautiful obituary talks about the outdoors organizations in which Dave was actively involved, and on top of that Dave helped out with our community organizations as well. I was privileged to serve on the Mayville Area Chamber of Commerce board with Dave back in the 90's.
One of the highlights of my Christmas season was at the Mayville Inn last month where I was able visit with Dave Kern at a get together there. It's hard to find people like Dave, who figure out how to live "the good life" which means that he mixed work with recreation, and he made time for unselfish community service, always with a smile and a handshake. Dave's death is a huge loss to Mayville. But it's a loss much worse for Sheryl, their children, Jason and Jaime and their families, mother and dad Hank and Jane, Dave's MEC co-workers, and his friends who now have to get along without this amazing Mayville guy they knew as Cobby.
