David Fredrick Sinton

The memorial service will be held on February 18, 2025 at 11:00AM at Buggs Funeral Home.

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Buggs Funeral Home & Crematory
2701 S. Harbor City Boulevard
Melbourne, Florida 32901
(321) 728-7076

Dave was a man who loved maps and trains. Although he was born in Belfast on November 22, 1941, he was truly a citizen of planet earth. On his bucket list were all the major cities he had not yet visited but he also yearned to be back in the gentle landscape of Northern Ireland where he grew up at a time when the linen industry was flourishing along the River Bann. His grandfathers were Frederick Buckby Sinton who was managing a bleaching works at Tullylish for Thomas Sinton &Co of Tandragee and David Wilson Smyth of Smyth’s Weaving Co. Ltd in Banbridge.

His father Arthur Buckby Sinton joined up at the start of World War II and in May 1940 he married Vera Wilson Smyth whose parents were then based in Belfast. In the Royal Air Force he became one of the Pathfinders. Their married life was largely spent at various air force bases in England until sister Vera May was born back in Belfast in 1943. Within days Arthur had been shot down near Ostend and his father had died of a heart attack. Dave’s beloved granny, Hannah Maria Sinton, invited Vera and her small children to keep her company in the relative safety of the countryside at Banford House near Gilford, Co Down where they stayed for nine years.

As a lad Dave spent summer holidays by the sea under the Mourne Mountains, playing a daily round of golf at the Royal County Down Golf club and rowing in the local boating pond. These remained his adult sports but he took a fleeting interest in cricket which appealed to his love of statistics. The family had been concerned that he was slow to learn to read, (there was little understanding of dyslexia in those days) but there was no doubt about his ability to talk.
After his mother married a vet, J Allen Stephenson, they moved in 1952 to set up a new practice in Dungannon, Co Tyrone and Dave attended the Royal School, Dungannon. At thirteen he became a boarder in Monkton Combe School in Bath, England, where he rowed for the school at the Henley regatta. He retained a membership at the regatta in later years. During this period four Stephenson sisters were born but Dave did not develop a love for babies. He found they greatly limited the activities his mother could have arranged for him when home in his holidays.

With good scientific qualifications from school, Dave returned to Ireland to study Civil Engineering at Queen’s University, Belfast where his class were working on the problems of laying the first Irish motorway across large areas of peat bog. He was a fast and reckless driver; on the road from Belfast to Dublin he was inclined to point out the places where he and other members of Queen’s rowing eight had crashed into the ditch.

Dave was active in student government both at Queens and the International Union of Students and in a lively cross-community debating group, that included the poet Seamus Heaney. There his eye was attracted to the golden hair and his ear to the lively mind of Nan Shearan. Marriages between Protestants and Catholics were fraught with difficulties in Ulster but Dave solved the problem by getting accepted in 1965 to take a Masters degree in City Planning in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Nan enrolled for an MSc at Boston University. They married in 1966 in the USA and took an extended honeymoon camping across the United States and visiting 42 states and all the western national parks before returning to a tiny apartment in Boston. Later they moved to a spacious flat in an old waterfront warehouse at the start of the redevelopment of the historic Faneuil Market Hall.

Dave was welcomed to Harvard through his participation in the University’s Host Family Program becoming another son for the lively Pile family. They guided his way into the new American traditions, sports and family experiences and extended their welcome to Nan when she arrived in 1966 and to Dave’s sister, Vera May when she visited. Decades later that friendship remains.

As part of his course Dave and fellow students worked in the Laboratory for Computer Graphics, a team developed by Professors Carl Steinitz and Peter Rogers, using computers as a tool for analysing large land areas and making decisions about conservation and development. Upon graduation he was invited to join the firm of Steinitz Rogers Associates and take up a position as associate professor at Harvard, roughly equating to junior lecturer in Britain. With the hope of remaining in the United States and with the potential for Dave to consult on Federal contracts, they had earlier both applied for and became naturalized American citizens. Now, in addition to teaching, his skills had him spending summers consulting in Europe, Canada and Israel. Nan was teaching part time at Boston University and Emerson College and became involved in design for a firm importing beautifully crafted Scandinavian furniture. Later they moved out of downtown Boston to a lovely house in Hingham, Mass. with its own swimming beach where Dave retuned to rowing, keeping his sculls under the veranda.

With his Harvard teaching post coming to an end, Dave, now in his late thirties, took a realistic view that he had come into his present career by a back door and that he was unlikely to progress in the academic world. Two of his Harvard colleagues suggested that he contact Jim Meadlock and Keith Schonrock, who had set up M & S Computing in 1969 in Huntsville, Alabama, where the US army was energetically engaging in the space race. Dave went to look and was offered a job but Nan, who had studied in the south at the University of Georgia, knew the climate and cultural life would be very different from Boston. She had recently moved her ageing mother to Hingham and worried that her mother’s health would be an issue. They agreed that Dave would give it a go for a while until a better option came up in Boston and he would come home for some weekends.

That agreement soon floundered as the rocket men launched more and more satellites and M&S developed the software to connect to them. It expanded rapidly into a major international company renamed Intergraph Corp in 1980. Dave realised he was at the cutting edge and better options were unlikely to come up back in Boston.  Always gregarious, he enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere of weekends in Huntsville and his visits to Massachusetts fizzled out.

Intergraph was employing Brigitte Kroh in their marketing department for her repertoire of modern languages. During World War II the US ‘paperclip’ programme had identified key workers in Germany with useful knowledge and skills. They rounded up the whole of Werner von Braun’s rocket team and flew them with their families to Huntsville, providing every facility to continue their work. These formed a substantial social group in the town. Brigitte, born in the North Bohemia region on 19 March 1944, was the daughter of Hubert and Elisabeth (Liesl) Kroh. Gradually Dave and Brigitte became an item and   through her he made good friends among the people with German origins. In the end it was the prospect of a visit from his mother that prompted Dave to complete a divorce from Nan and they parted in 1983. She retained the name Sinton and went on to make an international career in the world of horticulture and garden design. He married Brigitte in 1984 and they remained devoted for almost 40 years until her death.

Once again it was self-awareness that influenced Dave’s next move. He realised that he did not have the qualities that make a good manager. He resigned from Intergraph and became a freelance consultant to firms who were worrying about how the change to a new millennium might affect their software. The millennium bug turned out to be an over-rated danger and Dave needed a new focus. The Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, wanted someone to prepare their bid to create software for the next US census. This was a dream job for Dave because he was an avid user of census data, often feeling frustrated when census takers failed to collect information in the categories he wanted. He got the job and eventually won the bid for Harris. He was fortunate to find a bungalow within the confines of Melbourne Village which was close to the Harris building where his office would be based. The village is a small, incorporated town with its own police force and town commission dating back to 1957. The city of Melbourne has grown up around it but it remains a delightfully green space with original flora and fauna typical of Florida.  Here Dave was able to indulge a new hobby of birding. He could watch hummingbirds on his feeders from his armchair or visit the nearby sewage farm where eagles and ospreys paused on their migration routes.  He became an elected member of the town commission and was valued for all the research he conducted for them online.

After the census contract Harris did not offer Dave any project that attracted him and he and Brigitte decided they had enough pension to cover health insurance. They retired and had a decade that included attempting to visit all the national parks in the USA, looking up their relatives spread across Europe or riding on railways across the world. It was a river cruise starting in Budapest in 2016 which was Dave’s undoing. He got an acute stomach upset that left him unconscious in hospital for many weeks. He was finally repatriated but recovery was lengthy and partial. Brigitte had worked hard to bring him home but it had taken a toll on her. After the sudden death of her only sibling, Hubert on January 22, 2021, her sadness masked the cancer she was suffering from until it was discovered too late.  She died on July 11, 2023. In the aftermath of her death Dave received much support from Brigitte’s three nephews who made regular visits from Texas and helped him to sort out some confusion amongst her possessions and to organise his financial and legal matters. He was also blessed in those final years to have the daily care of Charlene Williams and her team at Carerizon, providing meals, supervising medication, doing the garden and driving Dave to appointments or to cafés where he could enjoy the beach.

In March 2024, around the anniversary of Brigitte’s birthday, Dave hosted a gathering for a few days that brought together Brigitte’s nephews, Mike, Tim and Matt Kroh, Nan Sinton and Dave’s sister Vera. It was a joyful time of sharing memories and good stories but tinged with sadness as some present recognised it was unlikely they would meet him in person again.
Dave spent his final Thanksgiving Day happily with Charlene’s family. He was keen to spend his remaining days in his own home but by Christmas he was admitted for hospital treatment and he never made it back. On his final day Charlene was able to connect him by his own phone to his sister Vera for final words of love and comfort before he died.

Dave is survived by Vera May Sinton, an ordained Anglican, in Hawes, N. Yorkshire, England and his half-sisters: Katherine Moira Stephenson, of Killyman, Co Tyrone; Lois Meriel Bailie of Lisburn, Co Antrim; Joy Hazel Stephenson of Gowerton nr Swansea, Wales and Sarah Elinor Wilson (Sally) of Dungannon, Co Tyrone.

Dave took citizenship of the United States seriously and was faithful to what he perceived to be its values. He was respectful and generous towards people of every race and creed. He supported democracy; he and Brigitte were active in encouraging people to sign on as voters and play their part in the political process. His working life was dedicated to promoting the care of the environment of our planet. He died, aged 83, on 21 January 2025. Those of us, who knew and loved him, wonder: what would he be saying to us as our future unfolds in years to come?