David Walden Fisher died peacefully at home Jan. 26 at the age of 94, after a long decline.
Born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 3, 1925, he was the third son of Elizabeth Walden and Edwin H. Fisher. David’s mother descended from a long line of seafaring Waldens, including an ancestor who was assistant purser on the Ranger under John Paul Jones. Edwin Fisher was a founder of Fisher Scientific in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
David was preceded in death by the love of his life, Barbara “Corky” Fisher, who died in 2009. The two of them met after World War II, when Corky’s parents rented a summer home in Sachem’s Head; they were married for more than half a century. They were inseparable until her death.
David grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, spending summers in Sachem’s Head where he raced sailboats, including his beloved Zip, Caramba. He attended the Englewood School for Boys in New Jersey and Tabor Academy in Massachusetts. After graduating from Tabor in 1944, the US Army rejected him for service because of a congenital hip deformity, so he joined the British Army via the US Field Service and drove an ambulance on the front lines in Italy. At war’s end, he entered Yale University, where was captain of the lightweight crew in 1948 and in 1949 won the prestigious Frederic A. Stevenson Prize for perseverance and athleticism.
After Yale, he worked for Wallace Silver in Wallingford and then managed Scovil Hoe, a manufacturer of farm implements in Higganum. He was a manufacturing engineer by trade, but at heart he was a farmer.
Dave could be brusque and he didn’t suffer fools, showboaters, or whiners easily. But he was loyal and a superb judge of character, and served his community as a member of the Guilford and Sachem’s Head zoning boards and as an official in the local Republican Party. The town today in some measure reflects his efforts to control commercial development in the neighborhoods around the Green in the 1970s.
For years, he could be seen with his brother Binks, his dear friend Sonny Lazarevich, and other old-timers talking politics over coffee in the back of Douden’s Drug Store and later McDonald’s.
David Fisher is survived by Sally Gschwend-Fisher and her husband Thomas; Barbara; Daniel and his wife Ann; Andrew and his wife Rebecca; and grandchildren Helen, Eva, Andreas, Daniel, and Sam.
His life will be celebrated in a private ceremony later this year. In lieu of flowers please contribute to the Guilford ABC Program, PO Box 140, Guilford, CT 06437, or a charity of your choice. Arrangements in the care of the Guilford Funeral Home, 115 Church St., Guilford. To share a memory or leave a message of condolence for the family, please visit www.GuilfordFuneralHome.com.
