From Theresa Welford

I remember that David is a warm, friendly man with a wonderful voice and a big, hearty laugh. He finds such joy in words, books, poetry, friendship, people, nature, life. (I am simply not going to use past-tense verbs when I talk about him. It's too soon, and it's too final.)

He is utterly dedicated to teaching and to his students. I can't even count the number of times I've asked his former students about him and have gotten this reply: "Oh! Mr. Starnes! He's amazing!"

He is also one of the kindest men I've ever met, with a heart as big and deep as the ocean. After the slayings at Virginia Tech several weeks ago, David set up a memorial in the second-floor hallway of the Newton Building, complete with fresh flowers and selected poems. It was beautiful and touching, and it attests to David's compassion and tenderness.

And his crazy-gorgeous collage in honor of National Poetry Month this year! What fun he had assembling it. For a few weeks, it seems that every time I left my office, David was in the hallway, standing on a chair, adding more and more pictures of poets, backed by sheet after sheet of colorful paper. I think he stopped only because he ran out of wall-space.

Since David is such a lover of poetry, it is fitting to end with a few lines from W. H. Auden's poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats": "What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day...."