David O. Durling, 1929-2025 🇺🇸

NORTH WALPOLE, N.H. – It’s all over but the shouting for the legendary David Ormond Durling, who passed away in his sleep on Monday, July 28, at the age of 96.

Born May 26, 1929, in Langdon, N.H., home to 267 people at the time, David went on to travel the country and the world as a truck driver, Air Force loadmaster, and ski bum.

His childhood home had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing, and he remembered a large tree pinwheeling across their yard during the Hurricane of ’38. He went to elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse. This upbringing probably led to this frequent admonishment to his kids when they’d whine about something: “Tougher where there’s none.”

He started skiing as a boy, taught by his best friend James B. Porter, who later passed away in World War II, a loss that still caused him to get choked up decades later. Together they hiked up the fields and hills around Langdon and skied down with bear trap bindings holding their leather boots onto their wooden skis.

After graduating from Vilas High School, in Alstead, N.H., he enlisted in the Army Air Force in June, 1947, and was stationed first in the Philippines, and then in South Korea, where he was a truck driver during the Korean War. Upon returning stateside, he was stationed in Washington, D.C., when he was set up on a blind date with a stunning CIA secretary of Italian descent named Antoinette Pugliese. They married in 1953 and remained so until her passing in 2012.

Opposites in many ways – she had to tone the flavors in her cooking way down for the New Hampshire farm boy raised on bland porridge! – they were ultimately united by great senses of humor. No argument was so serious that it couldn’t be defused by a laugh. Well, except for that time early on when she hucked a frying pan at his head – but we’re sure he deserved it.

After briefly living in Alstead, N.H., they decided on a whim to move to Portland, Ore., with their friends the Holmes, but once they had their first child Cynthia in 1955, they moved back to the Northeast to be closer to the support of Antoinette’s family, eventually settling in Highland Park, N.J.

Later on, in 1970, they moved up to North Walpole, N.H., where they both lived the rest of their lives.

He forged a career as a truck driver, working at several trucking companies in the Northeast, and due to his decades of truck driving, he was a human GPS. If you needed to travel six states over, David would ask what time you were leaving and then proceed to tell you the best way to get there and which NYC bridges to avoid. He started driving tractor trailers long before power steering, and of course could easily back up a trailer using just his mirrors; none of this backup camera crap for him.

He also transitioned into the Air Force Reserve – he became a loadmaster on C-121 and C-141 cargo planes, which enabled him to travel the world once a month, heading to locations both desirable – several European countries, and somewhat less so – Thule, Greenland. He also flew on several missions in support of the Vietnam War – supplies going there, casualties coming home – and the Yom Kippur War. He eventually retired as a senior master sergeant.

Once retired from truck driving, he kept his hand in the biz, both by going on cross-country trucking trips with BDR and restoring antique trucks, including two Brockways and a Mack. At the many antique truck shows where he displayed his vehicles, he was fully in his element, surrounded by his people.

But his true love was always skiing. When living in New Jersey, he was reintroduced to it by his brother-in-law Anthony Pugliese, who was also a great tennis buddy. “How you hittin’ ‘em, Ace?” was a common greeting between the two. Together they skied the Poconos, which is some sort of tiny mountain range down there.

He started ski instructing at Okemo in his 50s, and once he retired from truck driving, he became a full-time ski instructor, always imploring his students to “stand tall, look cool!” He continued instructing until he was 90, and probably could’ve eked out another year or two, if it hadn’t been for Covid restrictions mandating that everyone put on their gear in the parking lot. If you can’t chitchat in the lodge, what’s the use?

When David was 61, he snapped his femur ski instructing when his student rammed into him. A large titanium rod was inserted to stabilize the bone, and at that point, most people would’ve thrown in the towel on skiing. David skied another 30 years.

When David was 71, the Keene Sentinel featured him in an profile titled “Smooth-skiing senior.” The main gist of the piece was, “Hey, look at this old-guy instructor!” He skied another 20 years after that. Not many people get to ski with their great-grandchildren, but David sure did.

And he played tennis until he was 90 or so, eventually stopping because of a shoulder injury, no doubt a result of his service motion, which was not so much a “motion” as a “spasm” as he rifled line-drive serves an inch over the net.

After Antoinette passed, David lived in his own house in North Walpole for 13 more years, and during that time he was forced, for the first time in his life, to learn how to cook for himself, and soon had a vast repertoire ranging from bowl of cereal to peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with the occasional let’s go out to eat thrown in here and there.

What was he like? Well, he was very competitive, whether he was trash-talking you on the tennis courts, “Can’t stand prosperity!” when you’d screw up after a good play, or cackling while annihilating his children in Monopoly. There are rumors that his children inherited that competitiveness.

No one was a better storyteller, and his joke telling was superb. A voracious reader, he could talk with anyone, and he enjoyed ski instructing as much for the wide range of people he got to meet as for the actual teaching.

We will miss him dearly. If you get a chance, put on his favorite song, Willie Nelson’s “On The Road Again,” and tell a great, funny story to your friends in his honor. And for the love of Christ, don’t interrupt them when they’re telling you a good story!

David is predeceased by his wonderful wife Antoinette Frances Durling (nee Pugliese), as well as his sister Jean Barreras (nee Durling). He is survived by his two daughters Cynthia Jean (Michael) Hayes, of Drewsville, N.H., and Barbara Ann (Ralph) Durling-Colby, of Boothbay Harbor, Maine; and his three sons David Anthony (Barbara) Durling, of Kittery, Maine, William Austin Durling, of Haverhill, Mass., and Robert Christopher (Delila Katz) Durling, of Holliston, Mass.; as well as 13 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

There are no calling hours. There will be a graveside service Saturday, Aug. 23, at 11 a.m., at the Langdon Lower Cemetery, with a gathering afterwards at Langdon Town Hall. Fenton & Hennessey are in charge of the arrangements.

In David’s memory, donations in check form can be sent to Langdon Heritage Commission, 122 New Hampshire Route 12A, Unit #1, Langdon, NH 03602.

Bonus: Classic David Durling sayings. When starting a household project, he’d often use his father’s old saying: “First thing you gotta do is get you’re a** behind ya.” When you complained about the cold: “Ah, what are you gonna do when winter comes?” When you dithered: “Do something, right or wrong!” Having a few drinks? “Gettin’ in the sauce!” When he’d pretend to be lost on the back roads of New Hampshire: “The bad news is, we’re lost. The good news is, we’re making good time.”