The Reverend David Walker Cammack June 14, 1925 – August 5, 2020
He had faith — that each of us could do better, that the world could be redeemed. He had an uncommon gift for forgiveness.
This conviction and the great war, just ended, led him to study at the Virginia Theological Seminary; and in 1955 he entered the ministry at St. Paul’s Church in Charlottesville. There he served as the Diocese of Virginia’s Chaplain to the University. Also at the University, he taught a course on Religions of the World, a course he continued to love and to teach throughout his career. In 1963 he was called to Grace Church and St. Mary’s Church in Berryville as their rector.
In this time of southern struggles to throw off segregation, he was in a vanguard. The years of his ministry in Virginia coincided with new legal mandates for integration, and with resistance to those mandates. In this divide he worked together with others of the community in Charlottesville and in Berryville to advance understanding and racial justice, and to promote integration.
In 1970 he moved to the Diocese of Maryland, where he served congregations at St. Mary’s, Woodlawn; Emmanuel, Baltimore; and a particularly gratifying decade with the people of Trinity, Elkridge.
He was born David Walker Cammack in his father’s hometown of Huntington, West Virginia to Howard and Sally Cammack. As a schoolboy in Charleston, he discovered baseball, train travel, and dance, sharing these passions with a group of friends. This group of good friends remained in touch throughout their lives, even as careers and decades scattered them.
David squeezed in one year at Princeton University, then entered the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. At the Academy he mastered the high bar on the gymnastics team, marched in Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral, and learned to read the winds. After graduation in the class of 1948A, he circumnavigated the world as a Naval officer on the aircraft carrier Valley Forge, an experience that inspired a lifetime of international travel.
His second wife, Shirley Deane Cammack (d. 2014), shared his curiosity and enthusiasm for adventure; they enjoyed many trips together in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States. And he continued a sailor throughout his life, particularly on Lake Champlain in New York State where he was sometimes commodore of the small and tenacious Split Rock Yacht Club.
For many years David and Shirley lived among good friends in Dickeyville, Maryland before moving in 2002 to Fairhaven, a retirement community in Sykesville. His life there was a rich blend of travel, ministry, teaching, and dancing the two-step.
David died peacefully at Fairhaven, not from the corona virus, but during the time of cruel distances imposed by the virus proscriptions. He was cheered by a “compassionate visit” with his son Tom, which was allowed during his last hours.
He is survived by his four children with his first wife, Nancy Haislip Houston: Sally Nelson Cammack, Elizabeth Diamond, Cordelia Sand, and Tom Cammack. He is also survived by his sister Anne Brewster, stepson B. Beverley Byrd Jr., Elizabeth’s two children and two grandchildren, his grandchild Alexander Sand, and his great-grandchild Rowan Sand.
David will be remembered at a graveside memorial service at Grace Church in Berryville on Monday, June 14 at two in the afternoon.
Contributions in David’s memory may be sent to the Cammack Children’s Center, 64 W. 6th Avenue, Huntington, WV 25701 and to the American Youth Foundation, 6357 Clayton Road, St. Louis, MO 63117.
