David Austin Sawyer

Dave was born September 27, 1938 at old St. Joseph’s Hospital in Kansas City, MO, the son of Joseph Neal Sawyer, a Gustin-Bacon Manufacturing Co. executive, and Virginia Ann Austin, a sixth-generation Kansas Citian. He was a grandson of Howard Albert Austin, early Prudential Insurance Company Kansas City manager; a great-grandson of Bernard Corrigan, builder and Metropolitan Street Railway magnate; a great-great-grandson of Patrick Shannon, dry goods merchant, outfitter to the Santa Fe and Oregon trades and mayor of Kansas City in 1864-65; and a great-great-great grandson of Joseph Jarboe, pioneer 1835 settler who migrated from western Kentucky and purchased and platted Jarboe’s Addition to the new Town of Kansas.

Dave was an Eagle Scout, a member of the Tribe of Mic-O-Say, a member of the 1956 graduating class of Southwest High School and, with an interval of Army Reserve Active duty, divided his college years evenly between Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, where he rowed on the crew and was a member of Colonial Club, and the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta, held the Phi Delta Theta Scholarship Cup, and graduated with a B.A. degree in 1961.

After varied experience at the Pacific Coast Head Office of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in San Francisco, the Folgers Coffee Company eastern headquarters in Kansas City, and as a reporter for the Kansas City Times, in 1964 he enrolled at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, where he was a member of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity and won the American Jurisprudence Award for Creditors Rights, graduating with a J.D. degree in 1967, in that year becoming a member of the Missouri Bar.

After practicing law at the Independence, MO firm where he clerked to finance his legal studies, Dave served as estate planning counsel at Commerce Bank of Kansas City Trust Department. In 1971 he became interested in the title insurance industry and joined the Guarantee Abstract and Title Company, Inc. in Kansas City, KS as an attorney examiner. In 1973 he was appointed by Guarantee Abstract’s underwriter, Chicago Title Insurance Company, as escrow counsel and later as regional claims attorney in its Kansas City, MO office. In 1978 he was invited to relocate to Chicago Title’s southern regional headquarters in Atlanta, GA, where in 1984 he was appointed Regional Claims Counsel, heading a staff administering the company’s claims operations in the southern states from New Mexico to Florida and in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. In 1994, preliminary to retirement, he moved to Orlando, FL, where he lived in the Altamonte Springs/Sweetwater district and served at Chicago Title’s newly established Regional Claims Headquarters in Winter Park as Senior Counsel until his retirement in 1999. In July of 2000, he returned to Kansas City and took up residence at Plaza Pavilion on the Country Club Plaza.

Dave was a devotee of early American history and genealogy and became a lifetime member of both the Jamestowne Society and the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. He was a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Native Sons and Daughters of Kansas City, the Civil War Roundtable, the Alden Kindred of America and the New England Historic Genealogic Society. Over the years he accumulated voluminous records of family history since the 1500s in England, France and the Netherlands, the 1600s in Massachusetts, New Amsterdam, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, and of deeper ancestries primarily in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. To assure their preservation, Dave created and distributed hardbound indexed research files to his parents, siblings, nieces and nephew and other relatives, and arranged for digital files to be prepared for his 23 grandnieces and grandnephews.

Dave was an unfailing enthusiast for Kansas City and considered himself surpassingly fortunate to be born and raised in a loving family in such a special place. He liked to recall the rhetorical question of the French writer Andre Maurois to the effect that “who in Europe, or in America for that matter, knows that Kansas City is one of the loveliest cities on earth?” Dave’s fascination with the City proceeded from not only the tales handed down in the family long ago regarding the ancestors who helped build the City, but also from his all-too-brief experience at the Kansas City Star/Times where as a young reporter he was indelibly imprinted with The Star’s unwavering determination to chronicle Kansas City’s history and development. In his later years he marveled at the fast-paced progress in what seemed to him a third urban renaissance. This enthusiasm was all the more stoked by the long absence from home during his working years in the South. He took special delight in the fact that Kansas City was once again becoming a streetcar town and that one of its stops on Main Street downtown was being developed as the resplendent Corrigan Station. Dave was convinced that Kansas City would in future generations become the great “Centropolis” envisioned by its noted civic booster William Gilpin so many years ago.

Dave’s return to Kansas City was auspicious for him in more ways than the fulfillment of a return to roots, for it was here he met the late-in-life love of his life, Margaret Thomas, together with whom he shared not only the allurements of local city life but also far-ranging trips to her native northern Idaho, where a cabin on Lake Coeur d’Alene and mountain biking on the Hiawatha Trail through the Bitterroots into Montana were special features. In this way as in so many others, blessings abounded in his later years.

Dave was a member of Mensa, The Missouri Bar, the Princeton Alumni Association of Kansas City, the University of Missouri Alumni Association, the Golden Legion of Phi Delta Theta, the Princeton University Rowing Association, and the Plaza Club. He was a supporter of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Humane Society of the United States, the Land Institute of Salina, KS, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. He was a former member of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church of Kansas City, MO.

Loved ones remember Dave as a kind and gracious gentleman, a quiet introvert with a sweet smile, an impressive intellect and an amazing memory. Dave was proud of being a Democrat and an advocate for liberal values. He loved the wind rustling leaves, the gleaming full moon, and lying on the chaise watching for hawks, owls and bats. He was a defender of animals and a dedicated scholar. He was intensely loyal to his family and worked tirelessly for decades uncovering and documenting the impressive family genealogy.

Dave is survived by his beloved companion Margaret Thomas; her family, Alex Brown (Kristin) and Andrea Brown (Brady McLearen); his sister, Suzanne Koontz (Paul); his twin brother J. Neal Sawyer, Jr. (Kathy); his brother Robert N. Sawyer (Jennifer); and eight nieces and nephews. A Celebration of Life will be held at a future date. A private family graveside will be held at Forest Hill & Calvary Cemetery in Kansas City, MO.

Memorial donations can be made to Great Plains Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).

“Good night sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”