David is musical

Now, those of you who know
my husband David know that he is musical. He sings. He plays the guitar. He even taps out rhythms when working with the worship team for a Sunday morning set. What you might not know, however, is that he also used to play the trumpet. I'm told that that era of his musical career was short-lived, but remnants of those days eek out every so often. In fact, we get an earful of his tunes whenever he gets ahold of any cylindrical tubing, the legs to our swim team sign being a perfect example. Do I love him for his mouthy melodies? Not exactly for that, but it's just one of his quirks that makes him him. I get a kick out of how much HE enjoys it so much, and the kids often join in with their own tunes. It certainly helps me find him easily in a busy post-meet parking lot.

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David in the News

A few weeks ago David had the opportunity of representing Wham-O, his employer for the past nine years, for a newspaper article. The new owners of Wham-O had just purchased another company called Sprig Toys, and the San Francisco Chronicle was interested in the new change of direction. Sprig Toys makes a line of 'Eco-friendly' products for toddlers that are made of recycled plastic with wood sawdust mixed in. This makes an interesting sturdy-feeling plastic that smells like wood.

Here are links to the article that went to print on March 8th and to a scanned image of the printed SF Chronicle article.

Here is the portion about David's role at the company: "David FitzGerald, senior product design manager at Wham-O, has the enviable job of 'coming up with crazy ideas and figuring out how to make them cool.' For instance, he took jai alai throwers and tweaked them to shoot out snowballs at the flick of a wrist. He recruits his three kids, plus children at his church youth group, for hands-on product testing." (You can see the "SnowTracBall" being described on this website.)

You never know exactly how you will be portrayed and what will be quoted. David had given a more wordy response to the reporter that was truncated by necessity. He had described his job this way, "We come up with crazy ideas, figure out how to make them work, make them look cool, and then get them into production." We are happy with how the reporter simplified things and provided a generally positive image of David and of Wham-O.