1310 Brookstown Avenue, #9

Winston-Salem NC 27101-1147

August 13, 2013

 

Principal Harrison Bailey III

Liberty High School

1115 Linden Street

Bethlehem PA 18018

 

Subject:  Nomination of David L. Waltz, PhD, 1943-2012, as Distinguished Alumnus of Liberty High School

 

Dear Principal Bailey

 

Members of my Liberty High School class (1961) have asked me to send you materials supporting the nomination of David Leigh Waltz as a Distinguished Alumnus of Liberty High School.  David passed away a year ago, as a consequence of a brain tumor.

 

In our high school years, David was my best friend.  I followed his progress as he went on to MIT, where he completed his BS, MS and PhD degrees several years later.  Then it was on to the University of Illinois, known for its computer science department, where David (1973-1984) quickly became a tenured professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, working in the area of Artificial Intelligence. 

 

In the late 1980s I visited him at the Thinking Machines Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he had become Director of Advanced Information Systems (1984-1993).  In the mid-1990s, I visited him in Princeton, New Jersey where the NEC Corporation had asked David to establish, staff, and head a research center to investigate what the future of computers.  David hired over fifty people with PhDs to staff this center, all of whose research was to enter the public domain as a gift to science.

 

Near the end of David’s time with NEC he was elected President of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, serving a two year term, 1997-1999.

 

David had numerous advisory roles, in such organizations as NASA’s Ames Research Laboratories, and the Army Research Laboratory, Digitization and Communications Science Division, as well as with the National Science Foundation.

 

David went on from the NEC Research Institute to establish, staff, and head the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University in 2003, which he directed until his death in 2012.

 

David was a somewhat quiet, thoughtful lad in his high school days, active in band and also its president.  He took part in other activities as well, but was not one to grab the attention of others as some do.  (Below: David’s yearbook photograph, 1961.)

 

I will always treasure the memories of talking with David every few weeks during the last 12 months of his life, using Skype video conferencing.  He knew and faced his very difficult fate with courage, and the wonderful spirit he seemed to exhibit all his life.

 

I believe you can find few Liberty High School graduates more deserving of being added to the list of Distinguished Alumni of Liberty High School than David Leigh Waltz.

 

When David passed away, the New York Times put the newspaper’s article about his life, not on the obituary page, but in the Science Section, headlined, “. . .Computer Science Pioneer Dies, Aged 68”.  This article is the first exhibit following this cover letter, and I believe is a very strong argument for seconding this nomination.

 

Also please note daughter Vanessa’s letter, which tells of a very unusual father who took time for others to an unusual extent!

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

Thomas J. Haupert, for the Class of 1961

 

  1. R. Russell Shunk, Susan Jaxheimer Scholl, Roger J. Hudak, and Ned Huber

 

Enclosures:

     The New York Times Obituary;

     The letter of daughter, Vanessa, about a very unusual father;

     The Wikipedia article, as of July 20, 2013;

     Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) about David L. Waltz;

     In Memoriam, Brandeis University;

     Curriculum Vitae.