David James Riley – Willowise

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David James Riley passed away at the age of 87 on December 03, 2021 in Laguna Woods, California. Dave was born on January 2, 1935 to Harold B. Riley and Rose (LeClair) Riley in Bangor, Maine.

Dave reflected fondly on his time growing up in Bangor. Later, as a California resident, he proudly proclaimed his love for his hometown (and its correct pronunciation) with his personalized license plate “Bangaw.” Dave graduated from St. Joseph Juniorate in Peabody, MA, in 1953, and obtained his BA and MA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State, and his teaching credential at UC Berkeley.

For his 2003 high school reunion at John Bapst High School, Dave wrote a summary of what he had been up to since high school, which we share here, in his own words:

“As some of you may remember, after my freshman year I left John Bapst to study for the Xaverian Brothers, but decided in 1955 it was not the life for me. By then many of you were halfway through college, and I was still trying to figure out what to do. I took courses at Husson, but the double-entry system overwhelmed my poetic mind. A year or so later the army threatened to draft me, so I enlisted in hopes of getting some schooling. It worked. The military sent me to Monterey to study Russian for a year at the Army Language School, and then to the East German border where I put on earphones and listened to intercepted Russian military communications for 18 months. After my discharge I went back to California, got a BA and MA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State, and a teaching credential at UC Berkeley. Then I taught high school English and journalism for 18 years.

One day in 1964, I saw a young lady come out of a building in Menlo Park, California on her way to do an errand, and instantly had to meet her. She was Marilyn Gough, who had moved to the Bay Area from Seattle. The following Friday, we went on our first date and two years later we were married. Eventually we had two children, Kathleen and Michael.

In 1979, I made a curious career decision. With two kids not that many years away from college and a tenured teaching position bringing in a modest but assured income, I became a freelance writer. A marketing writer, not the kind who writes fiction. (Although the cynics among you may think that marketing writers produce fiction.) For the next 20 years, I had an adventurous time writing for some very good companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the Bay Area. I’ve published some other stuff over the years. A college professor put one of my short stories (“The Guy Who Owned the Pitcher’s Mound”) in an anthology that included fiction by Joyce, Thurber, Steinbeck and Updike. My story is quite forgettable, but the table of contents I had framed.

In 1999, Marilyn and I retired, sold our home in Palo Alto, and moved to Laguna Woods, which is just inland from Laguna Beach and about 50 miles south of L.A. We are 15 minutes from the ocean and five minutes from my golf club. Michael, who got a four-year taste of New England life as a student at RISD in Providence, is an art director in L.A., and he, his wife Laura, and their two sons live an hour north of us. Kathleen is a physical therapist, and lives with her husband Mike and their son in University Place, Washington, about a half-hour south of Seattle.

Last year I made another curious career decision — I came out of retirement just a little bit to become an extra (the term of art these days is “background actor”) in movies and TV. I’ve been in about a dozen productions so far, including “Seabiscuit,” “Hollywood Homicide” (I’m the face-down stiff Harrison Ford investigates in the very last scene of the film), “The West Wing,” “The Gilmore Girls,” “The Guardian”, and “The District”. While working on last season’s final episode of “The West Wing” (when the President’s daughter is kidnapped) I really got the acting bug, so now I’m taking classes in hopes of making the jump from background actor to principal.”

Dave was the author of three books and several short stories. His first book, “Freedom of Dilemma,” critiqued the mass media during the Nixon/Agnew era. “The Twelve-Billion Dollar Man,” his second book, described the heartwarming lives of 33 people who did so much to help others, sometimes at great peril. His new novel, “The Last Big Adventure,” depicts the life and loves of editor/author/parent/golfer Andrew Chase. Here are 4 of Dave’s short stories:

Dave is survived by his beloved wife of 55 years, Marilyn; his daughter Kathleen Roelofsen, her husband Mike Roelofsen, and their sons, Matthew and Timothy; his son Michael Riley, his wife Laura Riley, and their sons, Jack and Luke; and several nieces and nephews.