David Middleton
bicycling miles across Europe and USA
February 26, 1941 – January 25, 2025
David loved and was loved. He embraced change and walked positively through life,
making connections, lifting others up, and prioritizing his family and friends.
We remember David’s intelligence, humor and ability to bring joy to all
who had the privilege of having even a moment with him.
We loved Dave, and he loved us dearly.
“You are what you think, having become what you thought.” Siddhartha
David Charles Middleton Memorial Service
February 15, 2025
My name is Meg Ziegelmann and as a friend of the family for over 50 years, I was humbled and honored to be asked by the family to be the Service Leader today. Thank you!
This is a day of both grieving and celebrating the life of a husband, a father and a friend, David Charles Middleton. I intentionally included the word “grieving” because in contrast to other cultures, ours sometimes slides through the grieving part of today too quickly. Our society functions on getting things done on fast forward. Yet, when death occurs with someone we love and care about, we are numb, almost in a surreal place. We go through the formalities of preparing and participating in the Memorial Service. Then we move on.
This isn’t the way of other cultures where there are often specific practices that continue for some time. They have a purpose. For the friends of the deceased, it’s to remind them that the family is still hurting. In Greece the family dresses in black for the first year; the second year they wear gray. They are telling us that their grief is poignant in the first year and less so the second year. In Mexico there is the Catholic Mass and the burial, followed by 9 days of near silence. It is the time for respectful reflection. One is expected to be in church as often as possible to pray for the deceased’ soul that it will be “cleansed” in preparation for its welcoming into heaven.
There are signs of healthy changes in our society. Some families now have more intentional expressions of their loss. A small altar might be set up in a place in the home. Or, each year on the day of the death, the family might gather, have a meal and read a poem or play a piece of music they’ve written.
For those of us here today let us remember that after today the family will be on their own again. They won’t be surrounded by the loving support they are receiving today. Yet support will still be needed. Random days of sadness and tears will continue. So I suggest that for a while, instead of greeting family members with our usual “How are you?” — that instead we ask – “How are you today?”
But let me not linger here too long and instead turn to lifting up the richness of Davids’ life. That is everyone’s favorite part. We each have a “piece” of David from the individual experiences we had with him. But none of us has the “whole”. Today we bring the “pieces” together and we create the “whole”. We may hear surprising things — and let’s mix in laughter where it fits. Enjoy the comedy in Davids’ life as well as our admiration and respect for him. Because we all know, our journey in life has many twists and turns.
I first met David and Sharon in the mid-1970’s. We lived in different communities. We went to different churches. They were Lutheran, I Methodist. It was a time of the ecumenical movement. You may remember the emergence of new theologies. Clergy had been taught them in seminary, but were reluctant to bring them to their congregations as some of it was very different from their traditional beliefs. Yet, it was becoming more difficult for congregants to accept Biblical literalism in the midst of our new scientific world. It was then that David, Sharon and I took a Religious Studies I course with the Ecumenical Institute that led us down a path where our confusing beliefs were replaced with a more relevant theology for the times. It asked the profound question of what is going to be the “meaning of your life”? Or as the poet Mary Oliver asks, “What I am going to do with my one and only life?” That question had an impact on us., inspiring us to live with renewed purpose and commitment. Our churches became alive again and engaged in social action. Those shared experiences drew David, Sharon and I together.
Our friendship soon went beyond our church involvement. Sharon and David were active bicyclers. They invited me to join them. I choked when they said they biked 14 miles a ride! I couldn’t even do 5. That sounded like punishment, not fun. But they coached me in the skills I needed to stretch my biking prowess and miles. David did insist though that he was not going to be my “maintenance guy”. I had to learn the basics of taking care of my own bike like Sharon did. (Though I quickly learned to turn to son-in-law Brian who worked in a bike repair shop. Thank you Brian!) It only took one summer before David and Sharon had me biking 60 miles a day, admittedly always lagging behind. I graduated under their watch to biking week long rides of 400 miles and camping on high school grounds. To their credit I biked 13 of those while they went on to bike western mountains of the U.S. and Europe with the Gray Tortoises.
We learned how to meditate and did a number of Vipassana meditation retreats together. David kept up his daily practice for 30 years. He was much more diligent than the others of us – disciplined man.
I had always been a movie “buff”; and we often watched independent and foreign films together. Soon I was sitting in live theater with them. I was reading more books. We began having deeper and more reflective conversations…. all led by David, of course. He was ever looking in to the deeper message. Our discussions were never shallow.
David shared he had been raised as the “Prince” in his family. (Probably because he was a boy, that was how it was in those days.) He admitted he had to ”tone it down”…..the prince behavior. But it still popped up now and then. David, friend Barbara Keller and I were at an Institute of Cultural Affairs Conference in a small village in the hills of Mexico. My luggage did not arrive, and I was told it would be delivered the next day. David and Barbara offered to share what they could with me. David opened his suitcase and there they were…. 7 neatly rolled up belts. Barbara and I burst in to laughter….. “David, whatever do you need 7 belts for?!” I think there was still a little of the “Prince” in him.
As a father, one only has to look at Peter, Lisa and Amy to know what a good father he was. I remember how protective he always was of them. When they turned of legal age, he said he understood that as hard as it could be, if he saw a flaw in a decision one of them was making, he had to back off. He was wise that way.
It must be said that David had no tolerance for whining! There was no playing “victim”.
We can’t talk about David without including Sharon. She has been an integral part of his life. They did most everything together. I remember well how when they finished their morning meditation with arms around each other in a long embrace. They were both steadfastly committed to the vows of their marriage. We all saw it: “In sickness and in health – till death do we part”. It has not only been that Davids life was “well lived’ but the marriage was also “well lived!”
In closing, there is much we don’t know as to where David is now, but we do know one thing with certainty. His life and stance toward it was a vital example to us. Take unto yourself what it is that you most treasure about him and make it yours. In that way he will continue to live through you. That is how we can honor Davids’ life!
~~ Meg Ziegelmann
I am Jim Troxel and my wife, Karen, and I have known David and Sharon, and Meg, for over 50 years. I want to share four things you might not know about David to round out your view of his life.
About 40 years ago, Sharon, Meg and Dave and a few others from the Milwaukee area designed a weekend course based on Joseph Campbell’s “Hero Journey” motif. Campbell wrote the book Hero with a 1000 Faces. And David led these guys and taught this weekend course in Chicago at the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) to a Midwest audience. The course enabled the participants to create a journal of their life story and help make sense of who they are and their role in life. Not only did they teach it, but they also gave their manual to the ICA, and the course got taught across the country by ICA staff and other volunteers like themselves.
Then, Karen and I took it to DePaul University, and it became a part of the organizational and personal change curriculum of their School for New Learning. I’m not sure how many people were impacted by this initiative; I’ll estimate several hundred. I know it impacted me. David played a significant role in developing that course.
Later we started a stock investment group called the Dart Investment Group (Diggers for short) because we figured either we learn how to do this properly, or we could just throw darts at the dart board. There were about 10 of us from Door County to Chicago that met monthly. We trained ourselves how to evaluate the finances of a publicly traded company so we could pool funds to make investments in the stock market. We met for about three years and David was the treasurer. We didn’t make any money. Although we learned some evaluation tools, at the end of the day, we learned just doing financial analysis wasn’t enough; you had to really spend time with the company you want to invest in to make sure you might have a chance to succeed. Then, at one meeting, David announced he wanted to pass the baton of being the treasurer, but nobody stepped up to take over. So, we called it a day. You know, when it’s over, it’s over. No hard feelings; let’s move on. And we did.
About 25 years ago, I asked David, since he and I had learned a little about investing, to join me in designing and delivering an investment seminar for early-stage seed investors to invest in new, startup companies. In our one-day course, one of us was the master ceremonies and the other person played the role of a new entrepreneur. David was a terrific role player as a founder of a new company that had invented a cure for Type 2 Diabetes. The kicker of his pitch was that the reason why he wanted to create this company was because he had a child that suffered from Type 2 Diabetes. He played the role so well that during the breaks, people would come up to him offering their condolences and felt sorry for him. At the end of the day when we pulled the curtain back, saying this was just a role play, they were astonished. Do you believe 3000 people in national 100 seminars around the country have been trained to be early-stage seed investors?
Some course graduates went on to start a trade association of their own called the Angel Capital Association with 15,000 members. They have a staff, a Washington DC lobbyist, an annual conference and do their own training now without us. David helped start that. Now the organization trains entrepreneurs who want to request outside funding for their start-up companies in Wyoming, North Dakota and on six different Native American tribal communities in Oklahoma and Michigan as well as in American Samoa. David was a catalyst in enabling that to happen.
Did you ever notice how David always ends up being the treasurer of many organizations he was a part of? The theater. The Meditation Center. Thirty years ago he became the treasurer for the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). The organizers of the group knew that if we were going to really be a professional organization, we had to have our finances set up correctly for the long haul, so we could get tax exemption, handle international currencies, produce audits and so forth. I knew David assisted other organizations with their finances, so I recruited him to be the first treasurer / bookkeeper of the IAF. He did a great job and today the IAF is celebrating their 30th anniversary with 2500 members in 99 countries. David was instrumental in getting that going.
Mirja Hanson from Minneapolis was the chair of the association while David was its Treasurer and she wrote me this to share with you, “He truly was a cornerstone member of the start-up IAF team. He was able to practice the ‘revolutionary financing’ approach that we needed. He served with flexibility and entrepreneurial prowess while crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s as a volunteer disciplined accountant! He was a pleasant, fun and supportive colleague to work with!”