By Russell Digati

Laboring above the banner, "Service Above Self," Rotarians all over the world work hard to help those less fortunate than themselves, often in ways that few outsiders can ever know. Yet surely none epitomized this noble slogan more completely than David O'Brien of Kenmore, New York.

David had been researching ways to better meet the needs of the world's starving people on a Rotary International scholarship in Bombay, India, when he died suddenly of a rare respiratory infection. He was only 29 years old.

David's mission in Bombay had been to study the success that city seemed to be having in feeding the many hungry people who live on its streets. This career anti-famine specialist with a masters degree in nutrition intended to use what he learned to replicate that city's triumph over want all over the world. However, the impact David made in the short few months he had worked at India's prestigious Tata Institute was something far more personal than any mere research project could ever envision.

As David's sister, Clare, recalls the scene when she came to pick up David's body: "There were dozens of people around me the entire time I was there wanting to hold my hand and comfort me and say how much they loved David," she recalls.

"David established strong ties with people everywhere even though their background was so much different from his own," Clare says. "When he was in Guatemala, he once went on a seven hour bus ride mostly on hot dusty roads to take a woman and her child to a hospital and then he paid for the child's care. My brother cared about all of the people he met on all of his journeys, and they really loved him for that."

Upon graduating from Dartmouth in 1991, as the winner of the Parks Award for his contributions to Dartmouth's tradition of caring for the less fortunate, David stayed in New England to run the New Hampshire Hunger