David Gill Warner, Jr. 40, died February 14, 1996 in a local hospital of complications following heart surgery.
He was born November 3, 1955 in Salt Lake City to D. Gill and Nedra Mortensen Warner, and married Pamela Johnson August 7, 1977. Except for an LDS mission in California, Dave lived his life in Salt Lake City. In a tumultuous growing up, he attended Curtis, Clayton, and Highland High Schools. At Highland he played doubles for the tennis team and continued in competitive junior tournaments in Utah, Las Vegas, and California, at 14 winning the Intermountain doubles and, with his father, the All Church Father-Son. He loved the game. Even when his physical abilities waned, he carried that love of the sport to assistant coaching as he had been coached by the legendary Grant Evans.
Whatever time it took to help, Dave thrived on the success of others. He loved to use his strong body to letter in football and wrestling. His #51 in football was retired when he graduated. His horse he rode with the same enthusiasm, in his favorite garb - a cowboy hat and boots. The outdoors drew and fed him as books and study never could. The boy in him, even as a man, furnished adventure and a naivete that won him friends and endeared him to his large family.
Dave's spirit had long out-distanced the frailties of a body and mind constantly struggling for identity. In touch with the divine and loving his Pam and Heidi, he wrote poetry full of his own straight-forward intimations of immortality. His was a soul bigger than his capacities to live the demands of a world of productivity. His job was his family and people, kindness his trademark. In LDS temples he proudly became a worker for the eternal destiny that beckoned him. He laughed, he supported others, he grew in innocence even as his struggle with medicines and treatments weighed him toward a shaky adulthood. His big arms and heart embraced us all. His wife, Pam, and his daughter, Heidi, have been at his side, constant, loving, strengthening in sickness and in health.
Dave is survived by his parents as well as Wendy and Bob Whitman (Dallas), Nancy and Glen Alleman (Salt Lake City), Gill and Val Warner (Tulsa), Ned and AnJanette Warner (Tulsa), and Peggy and Steve Ayers (Salt Lake City). He will also be missed by nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts, and scores of cousins and friends. He was preceded in death by his baby sister, Heidi.
Go well, dear Dave, in the faith and love you have bequeathed to us with gentle passion and boy/man conviction. You will stay even as you go, like soft wind in aspens or sun on snow melting into spring.
