Dave Collyer

When I was three-years-old my dad taught me how to play chess. More accurately, dad showed me how to move the pieces, but as I look back I realize that it was a pretty cool thing for a three-year-old to even understand how the pieces moved! It started me on the long road of loving and playing games, a road that I am on even now.

Through grade school and junior high I played more chess, and became very good at it. I trained myself by playing as many people as I could. I checked-out as many books as I could from the library, but my real training came when I went to the Spokane Chess Club when I was a freshman in high school. I met Mr. Dave Collyer. He was the highest rated player in Washington State who did not play chess for a living. Mr. Collyer was a teacher here in town at Northwest Christian High School, and also gave chess lessons to anyone willing to direct himself toward "The Royal Game." He was also very active in his Baptist church and was strong, yet quiet, man of faith.

Over the next few years I took lessons from Mr. Collyer and got to be known in the Spokane Chess Club as "David the Giant Killer." You see, at the ripe old age of 16 I was beating players who had been studying for decades and who were rated several hundred points higher than me. An equivalent for those of you out there who never played chess competitively would be like your local high school team beating a major league baseball team. I owed a great deal of my successes to Mr. Collyer. He was a kind man who also taught me important lessons about life at the same time I was learning about chess. The one that stuck with me best was, "True confidence (not arrogance) is more than it's own reward."

But as high school drug on I noticed changes in Mr. Collyer. He seemed to be getting old really fast; gray hair, wrinkles, and he was almost always fatigued. He quit his teaching job and was unable to give me as many lessons as he used to, saying he was very tired lately. Then he stopped coming to the chess club for weeks at a time. Eventually he told me what was wrong; Mr. Collyer had LUPUS, and was dying. The doctors gave him less than a year to live when I became a senior. I visited Mr. Collyer a few more times after he was bedridden, and then he went into the hospital. I was not emotionally strong enough to visit him after that, and soon he passed away.

There were about 500 people at Mr. Collyer's funeral at his church. The place was standing room only. I listened to the eulogy and learned that not only was Mr. Collyer a wonderful person to his chess students, but was a class-A man who served his community in many, many ways. The thing that hit me like a thunderbolt, though, and chokes me up to this day, was a story from his pastor. Mr. Collyer, in his last days on Earth before he died, had his wife bring him as many people as she could to see him in the hospital. Mr. Collyer wasn't dealing with his will, or settling old debts and grievances, or begging forgiveness for past wrongs he may have committed. No, what he was doing was calling as many people in to his hospital room and telling them, "I'm so glad you came. I don't have much time left, and I wanted to pray for you."

Can you believe that? The man was on his deathbed, staring into the great unknown, and was so at peace with his life and death that he continued serving others up until he couldn't do it anymore. To this day that blows me away. Mr. Collyer wasn't crying his brains out at losing his life, or regretting things he may have done, or divying up his assets. He was praying for as many people as he could because he knew he wasn't going to be able to soon. He died as he lived; serving others.

What an example. If we all worked harder on serving others and worked less on serving ourselves I know that this would be a far better world. I will never forget Mr. Collyer. I hope I never forget his life lessons, spoken and unspoken both.