David and the Little Birds; Forever Together in Memory

When we first heard that David Utterback was missing, and we desperately hoped he was yet alive, I took a walk into the back fields from our home, where he spent a lot of time, looking for wildlife and particularly birds. He once found a red tailed hawk's nest back there and climbed up to get photos of the young so he could study them and eventually, perhaps, draw them in his particular style of pencil rendering.

As I walked though an old dirt road, now overgrown with all kinds of brush, and even small trees, I heard a small bird in some of the bright, new leaves of a bush. I stood very still. It descended the light branches, making them bob with movement, coming closer to me. I could just admire the beautiful small body, the sounds it made, and smiled at the fun of watching this little creature.

And I remembered how in this very field, closer to the woods and stream a few hundred feet away, I had been with David one day, years ago. He stood still as he heard some chick-a-dees near-by. He began to make their sound. Then held out his hand. They came. Landed on his outstretched fingers. Like magic, wondrous and pure. Trust between him and them.

I remembered that time as I stood, worried and frightened about what might have happened to him, so far from this place and home he once shared with us.

And we of the East, where he started being an artist, will continue to remember many other times. David will live with us forever, as long as we talk about his gifts to us and to others, in his love of nature, his ever developing skills in his art that reflected his appreciation of all the natural world. The every small mark David made to create his pictures were a dedication, and a love of the perfection he found in the living bird, animal, tree, thorn, rocks of his isolated subjects.

Perfection. Always a goal, never reached. David has now given up his quest. And we can only say, "Thanks, David, for trying so long, and giving so much."

Yes, we will miss you, like part of our own body torn away, and hurting us as we try to remember the good times, the funny times, the joyful times, the silly expressions you made to easy the tensions.

And the generous work to help many of us, endless late nights, framing, hanging the art exhibits with our friend Lydia Serrell, our several joint efforts to honor an earlier New York State artist, Rockwell Kent.

There will come other stories about you, David. Someday, they will become the book I knew I should write, about young David and his young work, and his mature work, and his life's entire body of worthy work that shows what a teacher you were. Not just to a few of us, but others, who are yet to see your acts of love -- stated in each drawing you worked so faithfully to complete.

Yes, we are painfully sad that you have left us.

But we hold fast to our decades of love and appreciation for your being part of us. A thanks that resounds in that universe of all that is the best of man and nature. We are, none of us, "perfection," but what an effort you made to be honest in your work and friendships. Well done.

Love, as forever can ever be,

Linda Champagne and some of the family and friends still here.