David Kirtley died in mid-year, 1997, just three years after completing his monographic review of the reef-forming Sabellariidae. David was affiliated with the Florida Oceanographic Society and the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, but mostly worked from his home in Vero Beach, Florida. Kevin Eckelbarger and Mary Petersen, amongst others, remembered him thusly for ANNELIDA list members:
Kevin Eckelbarger: "Dave and I were colleagues at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Inst. in Ft. Pierce, Florida during the 1970's and we shared a laboratory and office for several years. He was in many ways a mentor and he helped stimulate my interest in polychaete biology. We conducted research together and we spent endless hours in the field collecting sabellariid polychaetes. He was without a doubt a very unusual and unique fellow.
"In many ways, Dave was responsible for getting me my first research job. I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation at Northeastern University (Boston) on the reproductive biology of Nicolea zostericola when the phone rang one afternoon in 1973. It was Dave Kirtley cheerfully asking if I'd be interested in a job in Florida studying the biology of sabellariid polychaetes as part of a collaborative beach erosion project with the Univ. of Florida. He had been asked to recruit a polychaete biologist and I had the good fortune to get the call. As I recall, Dave learned of my work from my M.A. advisor, Don Reish, but the phone call was almost a random act on Dave's part. That call changed my life. Dave had actually called D.P. Wilson in Plymouth to ask him if HE wanted the job! Unfortunately for Harbor Branch, Wilson preferred England so they got stuck with me. One thing led to another and I ended up at Harbor Branch sharing a project with Dave for several years.
"When I first arrived in Florida, I had not completed my dissertation and Dave pushed me hard to finish up so we could plunge into sabellariid biology together. He was finishing his Ph.D. rather late in life so, despite a great difference in age, we both defended our dissertations just a few weeks apart. Dave eventually left Harbor Branch in the late 1970's but I remained for another 18 years and we saw each other off and on. We chatted on the phone several times in recent years - the last time just a few months ago. Although I had long since departed the world of sabellariids, he continued to pick my brain about matters that troubled him. I visited D.P. Wilson at his home in Plymouth right before his death in the late 1980's and he wanted to know all about David Kirtley because Dave had exchanged many letters with him. Wilson was pleased that someone was continuing to do research on sabellariids and that Dave had taken the time to write an old man in his final years. Dave was a humble fellow when it came to his research and he was always careful to give credit to pioneers. This was reflected in the 'Acknowledgments' of his 1974 dissertation: 'Should this account of the writer's research prove to be useful to subsequent workers, the credit must go to those scientists and laymen who, since at least as long ago as 1711, have made their notes, observations and insight concerning the modern Sabellariidae and their possible fossil homologues available to science through publication. It is their devoted work that forms the scientific basis for this study. Where there are inadequacies and perhaps mistakes in this synthesis of published accounts and original research, the writer acknowledges them as his very own.'
"Dave Kirtley easily qualified as a 'character'. My first meeting with him in 1973 left me wondering what I was getting myself into but as I got to know him better, I soon discovered that he was a delightful and complex fellow. On the surface, he seemed to be a little nuts some days and he was perpetually engaged in mysterious plots and schemes. He was a world traveler and a bon vivant who had an insatiable curiosity about the natural world. He also lived life to the fullest and sometimes to excess. When I first discovered that he was getting his Ph.D. in geology, I assumed he didn't know much about biology - particularly invertebrates. I was very wrong. As far as I could tell, Dave was a self-taught biologist but he read widely and we held endless debates in our office about evolution and invertebrate biology. Dave opened my eyes to the world of geology and paleobiology. He had what seemed to be a photographic memory and he could recite long passages verbatim from obscure works. He had been an Oklahoma oil field 'wild catter' who was familiar with the rough and tumble world of Oklahoma 'roughnecks'. Although he looked like a rogue himself some days - a huge fellow with a deep voice and sunburn to match - he had a sharp mind and the field of geology merely served as a backdrop to his real love - polychaete biology. Invertebrate paleontology was a life long fascination for him and he was definitely obsessed with the Sabellariidae! He wrote his dissertation on a desk next to mine ('Geological Significance of the Sabellariidae' - Florida State Univ., 1974) and I watched him struggle through endless drawings of tubes and adult specimens. When I bought a new photomicroscope to study sabellariid larvae and histological sections of gonads, he began feeding me material to photograph for him. Although he had no experience with histology, he examined every slide I ever produced from a sabellariid - and he quickly learned all about their internal morphology. There were no details too trivial for his eye. I soon found myself learning from him and I developed a respect for his ideas and opinions. I also learned a great deal about geology and paleontology by reading all the literature he regularly dumped in my lap. We shared a 10' x 10' office that was so packed with sabellariid specimens from around the planet that it was nearly impossible to move!
"Dave was very comfortable with people and I always thought he could have been a millionnaire if he had gone into used car sales. He had a way with words, as they say. He was a charmer who could talk you into doing things you would never consider until he had you cornered. He was very articulate and was fluent in several languages so he moved easily in foreign circles. He liked people and he had charisma to burn. He was also a dreamer and a schemer and he used his natural 'people skills' to arm-twist others into helping him with his various research causes. We both gave hundreds of talks on sabellariid biology throughout south Florida - mostly to the public but often to officials who were concerned about beach erosion control. Dave was passionate about developing new ways to control erosion through biological means and with the force of his personality, he managed to find people willing to support him. In his endless quest for research support, he had dealings with both the high and the mighty - and sometimes the questionable - in an effort to secure funding for his dream projects. He was a survivor and he managed to continue his sabellariid research despite a general lack of interest by others. I admired his persistence and his infectious enthusiasm for polychaetes.
"I will always remember Dave as something of a father figure in my formative years following graduate school. He had lived a lot more of life than I had at that point and his worldly experience was attractive to a dull Indiana farm boy who was just beginning a career in marine science. It was perhaps not generally known that Dave had a number of lingering health problems that periodically forced him from the lab. He suffered from war-related injuries that caused him great pain some days and he was supposed to carefully watch his diet - which he rarely did. Dave always plunged ahead in life and damn the consequences! However, even on days when he was feeling ill, you could still engage him in a discussion if you had something new to say about sabellariids.
"Dave Kirtley made an indelible impression on me and we have all lost a champion of polychaete biology. Sabellariids never had a better friend. He loved the following quote (J.W. v. Goethe) from 'Faustus', Part I and he included it in the introduction to his dissertation - it seems appropriate to repeat it here:
'How can such hope dwell in one who digs through trash, with eager hands,and is delighted to find worms?'
Kevin J. Eckelbarger
Darling Marine Center
University of Maine
e-mail:
kevine@maine.maine.edu
Mary Petersen: "Although I had met David at the 4th International Polychaete Conference in Angers, France, in 1992, it was not until early 1995, when he sent me a copy of his monograph on the Sabellariidae that I really got to know him. After making sure that this important publication was really intended for me and not for the library, I wrote and thanked him. This was the start of a most enjoyable and interesting correspondence during which he enlightened me about all sorts of things, including those geological, and quickly became a close and highly valued friend and colleague. In the approximately two years that we had been communicating we managed to discuss - and sometimes solve - problems of all sorts, ranging from obscure type localities (and sometimes type depositories!) of sabellariids to the nomenclature of daffodils and jonquils. He appeared to have an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and as also noted by Kevin Eckelbarger, an incredible memory and a well developed sense of humor.
"As Kevin pointed out so well, David was a multitalented and highly unusual person with a curiosity, enthusiasm, and willingness to examine new ideas - even if he really didn't agree with them - that commanded admiration and respect. Despite various problems of health and funding applications that didn't get funded, David always came through as an optimist, and not a complainer. At a stage in life when many others would be thinking of winding up a research career, David was busily engaged in exploring new horizons and new ways to make his beloved sabellariids easier for the rest of us to recognize and identify. He was working on an illustrated web page for the genera and also wrote that he was making a three-dimensional model of a sabellariid to make the true relationships of the different features easier to understand. His enthusiasm was truly infectious; even though sabellariids might be outside one's present field of interest, I suspect that anyone who came in contact with David probably began to think they should at least pay more attention to these beautiful small animals.
"When David visited the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen in early 1996, as part of a study of sabellariids in European museums, part of his visit overlapped that of Vasily Radashevsky. To save time I fixed supper for all three of us at the museum, and we had some wonderful discussions on all imaginable topics over impromptu meals in the department library.
"David was a very conscientious and careful researcher, and while some of his descriptions may seem brief, it is not because he was superficial, but rather, perhaps, because he understood the animals so well that he did not always realize that others of us might have preferred a bit more information. At the time of his death, David was collaborating with several colleagues around the world on new species and genera of sabellariids. In his last letter to me he wrote:
'[the collaborators] don't know it, but the main reason I've been dragging and dragging my feet in completing some joint papers is: that I need to carefully check (and recheck) the database that includes the USNM collection before I can - with a clear conscience and to my own satisfaction - publish more new species names. If I didn't know that the specimens are there and it's just a matter of having the expense money to go and dig through them then it would be a different matter; but since I DO know that I would have a better perception of the diagnostic characters and apparent ranges of variability of those features, then I GOT to look!'
"I think this expresses David's attitude towards research pretty well - to do the best job possible without shortcuts or compromises. It's a real pity that he never got to check the material and more of one that he couldn't do so and stick around a bit longer to tell us about it. I'm sure that there are many of us who join his family in agreeing that his departure came much, much too soon. I feel privileged that I had the opportunity to get to know David better, even if only for a short time. It has been a delightful and enriching experience. He is already sorely missed and will not be forgotten.
Mary E. Petersen
Zoological Museum
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Denmark
E-mail: mepetersen@zmuc.ku.dk