Memorial services announced for Feb. 26 at Trione Winery
David Lewers, a Healdsburg original known for his straight talk and straight shooting, literally, who lived by his own letter of the law that accommodated both a certain amount of hell-raising and stern common sense, and who also won praise and awards for a lifetime of agricultural community leadership died unexpectedly on Feb. 6. He was 65.
The son of a rancher, logger and outdoorsman, Lewers lived much of his life beyond the fence line on his ranch west of Lake Sonoma and on frequent hunting outings all over the west. In the days just prior to his death he had been on a wild pig hunt and a duck shoot. He was planning another hunting trip when his body gave out to terminal lung cancer. He was born Dec. 22, 1953 in Oregon and moved to Healdsburg as an infant with his parents Gerald and Katy Lewers.
Lewers, with his wife Bunny, owned Lewers Auto Glass and were partners earlier with Dennis Parrish at Redwood Auto Body, which opened in 1979. When Dave’s oldest daughter Sarah started a 4-H project at age nine in 1988, he began his tenure on the Healdsburg Future Farmers Country Fair Board. From there, he remained a central figure in local ag youth, auctions and farmer exhibitions. He served on the Sonoma County Fair Board for 18 years, retiring in 2015 after serving as board president.
“It’s a real loss,” said his lifelong friend and former business partner Dennis Parrish. “So unexpected. He was just out hunting with my son a few weeks ago. He did say he was feeling ‘crappy’ and getting tired.”
Lewers was recently diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. He was rushed into chemo treatments, but came home after three days and collapsed at his rural residence west of Lake Sonoma.
Lewers graduated from Healdsburg High School in 1972 where he was on the wrestling team and played football. He stayed active in sports, playing for and sponsoring local men’s and coed softball teams as an adult.
Randy Hatcher, another schoolmate and neighborhood friend remembered him as a “go-getter. He was always out in the hills or playing ball or working with his dad. The Lewers were good, hard-working people. Dave’s death is really all of Sonoma County’s loss.”
Lewers is survived by his mother, daughters Sarah and Suzie and a granddaughter, Juliette. He is also survived by a brother James (Katy) of Cloverdale. Besides his parents, he was pre-deceased by a younger brother Tracy Alan Lewers who died in a tragic hunting accident in 1990.
Lewers carried an air of the modern wild west with him and was skilled at road-building, logging, machinery maintenance, grape growing and he possessed a self-taught knowledge of the law, especially how it pertained to land rights and individual freedoms.
“Yes, he was a big proponent of the law,” Bunny remembered. “He loved the law and was very proud when Sarah got her degree. He believed all laws had to be based in common sense and could never go against the laws of nature. He was for basic respect.”
Like his father before him, Lewers was a hunting safety instructor and was known as an expert hunter and fisherman. In 1997, the Lewers moved to High Rock Ranch on Kelly Road. Besides his own property, he also managed the neighboring Trione Ranch.
“He loved taking care of the land,” Bunny said. “That’s what he was really best at. If asked about his profession, I know he would want to be called a ‘rancher’.”
In 2000, he bought the full length of Kelly Road, sold at public auction as an abandoned right-of-way by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The old logging road that his father helped build had lost most use after the development of nearby Lake Sonoma. The Lewers family and a few ranch neighbors continued to maintain the route.
“It’s always been pretty quiet up here,” Bunny said, “and now it’s going to be a lot quieter.”
In 2016, Lewers was honored by the Sonoma County Fair with a dedication to him in the annual guidebook. At the fair he championed the return of turf horse racing and the expansion of the junior livestock auction facilities. He was a fixture at the annual junior livestock auctions, entertaining bidders with his red, white and blue garb and jumping jack antics scaling fences and walls to coax higher bids.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Feb. 26 at Trione Winery in Geyserville. Memorial donations are suggested by the family to be made to the Sonoma County Boys & Girls Clubs, where Lewers was an early attendee at Al Barbieri’s Healdsburg clubhouse.
