WALPA lost one of our own this spring when David Lamb died in Spokane after his battle with cancer. 
Many of us got to know Dave well through his WALPA work, as he volunteered for whatever job needed to get done. Dave was born in New York but chose to live in and protect the natural resources of the Pacific Northwest. He was a true friend of our organization.
Dave attended Washington State University, graduating with a Master’s in Environmental Science and Limnology in 1980. Dave was married to Michele Fevrier of Cherbourg, France.

 As a graduate student, Dave worked as an intern with Michael Kennedy Consulting Engineers, later becoming a member of the staff. Positions with the Lambert Group and Resource Management followed. In 2002, he became Lakewater Ecologist for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe in Plummer, Idaho, and for many years was the consultant on weed control for the Sacheen Lake Residents’ Association. During his career, Dave was deeply involved with lake management and research and practical application for the control of invasive Eurasian Milfoil. He was no friend of invasive species.
One of the best things about WALPA is the opportunity it gives us to make friends around the entire Pacific Northwest. Dave Lamb was one of those friends — geography would have precluded our friendship if not for the opportunity of meeting through WALPA. WALPA is not just an organization of people who do similar work; our strength is that we become true friends working together for something we care about deeply. And we like to talk about lakes over a cold beer.
A gesture that attempts to acknowledge some of these intangible benefits of our organization is renaming the current $750 WALPA Scholarship in honor of Dave Lamb and increasing the amount to $1000. You can donate via the WALPA website and know that you are probably giving scholarships to the next group of friends we perhaps have just not met yet. If you would like to remember Dave in this way, visit https://www.walpa.org/join-donate/ and note that your donation is in his honor.
Many of us enjoyed talking about killing invasive species with Dave Lamb over the years and vicariously following each others’ careers and families. In all that time, probably none of us can recall seeing Dave with anything but a smile on his face. And many of us remember him volunteering to do some of the WALPA leg work that was assigned when we happened to be out of the room. Dave was one of those happy hard workers an organization like ours relies upon. We had a good friend in Dave. We will miss him, and remember the aw-shucks smile that was always on his face. I’ll hoist a cold one to him tonight.
–Jonathan Frodge
