Dave Hoisve memorial webpage

Dave’s parents, Harold and Elaine Hoisve, were raised in Minnesota and Massachusetts, respectively. They met in Massachusetts during World War II, when Harold was stationed at Westover Field U.S. Army Air Base and Elaine was vice president of the local United Services Organization (USO), a volunteer organization that provided entertainment and social facilities for World War II servicemen. Harold trained as an air traffic controller, achieving the rank of staff sargeant. Elaine earned her associate degree in business.

In late 1944, Harold Hoisve was transferred to Wendover Airfield in western Utah. Wendover was a bomber crew training base for B-17s, B-24s, and the B-29 bombers that dropped atomic bombs on Japan — the Enola Gay and Bockscar. Harold’s younger brother led a group as an Army lieutenant during the invasion of Okinawa in the Pacific, while his other youngest brother, an Army corporal, landed on Omaha Beach one week after D-Day, after which he served as an anti-aircraft gunner in Europe.

One of Dave Hoisve’s most prized possessions was the first digital device he collected, inherited from Elaine’s father, Howard — a Morse code telegraph key used when Howard was a telegraph operator in 1920. Dave kept the telegraph key in his office.

Harold and Elaine Fay Thompson were married in Chicago on July 22, 1945. They lived in Minneapolis but Harold wanted to live in Utah because of its beautiful landscape, so they moved to Salt Lake City where Harold was hired at Ajax Presses. While there, he obtained several patents and worked his way up to chief engineer, and later, director of market research. Ajax Presses manufactured commercial equipment for the dry cleaning and laundering industry. Harold traveled extensively throughout the world and always mailed postcards back to Dave detailing his travels.

At Ajax Presses in 1967, Harold worked with medical researcher Dr. Willem Kolff of the University of Utah’s College of Medicine to develop an early prototype of a compact kidney dialysis machine called a “compact artificial kidney.”

When Dave was born in 1960, Harold was 49 years old and Elaine was 41. While Dave’s parents were considered older parents at the time, his family remained very active, regularly taking advantage of the diverse Utah outdoors.

When Dave was 6 years old, his uncle sent him a small toolbox for Christmas. Sitting in the living room, Dave’s parents were alarmed by the sounds coming from Dave’s bedroom. Upon entering his room, they found him digging through the sheetrock wall next to an electrical outlet. He told his parents he was looking for where the wires went.

In 1971, Dave’s father Harold passed away unexpectedly at the age of 60. Dave was 11 years old. Harold’s work had become increasingly stressful, requiring extensive travel, and there was pressure on the dry cleaning and laundering equipment business in part due to the introduction of permanent pressed clothing. To support the family, Dave’s mother Elaine restarted her career. She sold real estate and worked in businesses that included the trust department of the First Security Bank of Utah.

In 1978, Dave graduated from Skyline High School and began working at the U in July 1981 as a systems analyst. His main responsibility at the time was making the text editor on the Univac 1108 useable as a word processor. The reworked editor was called Format. When the PC came out later that year, he jumped in with both feet, leading the effort to support it on campus. He was at the front of the efforts to support PC networking and was an early adopter of Netware.

“Dave loved technology,” said ITSM Process Manager Craig Bennion. “He loved to be the first one to have it.”

There were initially two PC support groups on campus — PC Managers and Netware. One of Dave’s major accomplishments was writing iMail, or interlace mail, which was the campus email platform of choice for DOS and Windows for many years.

Dave was involved in the Utah Education Network (UEN) and rolling out internet access to K-12 students. He developed training for K-12 teachers and IT support personnel on the internet, as well as available computing tools and resources.

In 1997, the University Computer Center moved from Merrill Engineering Building to Marriott Library and was renamed the Academic Computing and Library Information Services (ACLIS). Dave continued his role as chair of the PC Managers group and supported the PC platform on campus. He was in charge of the MicroComputing group, which included library PC and Mac faculty, staff, and student computers. He oversaw the deployment and maintenance of Windows 95- and Novell Netware-based systems.

Dave loved lunch culture and would frequently invite everyone to go to lunch to discuss work. They would squeeze into his white Ford Thunderbird and go eat smothered burritos at La Frontera or spicy noodles at Café Trang.

“Everyone has nothing but positive things to say about Dave, and that the sorrow of his loss is of course universal among those who knew him,” said IT Professionals Board President Jeff Jonsson. “We miss him.”

Victoria Rassmussen, a close friend for 20 years, described Dave as having dauntless optimism and a childlike sense of wonder that enabled him to see opportunities even in the most difficult situations.

“One of Dave’s most endearing and memorable traits was his ability to dream big, whether it was deciding between a Lamborghini or a Maserati, or planning a trip to photograph star trails over the Grand Canyon, or even something like developing a program near and dear to his heart to identify, train, and promote student lab workers into longterm professionals ... all of these things have to do with his enthusiasm for big ideas,” Rassmussen said in a video recording for the IT Professionals Forum tribute.

Dave transferred to UIT in May 2005 and retired in June 2017. He passed away on June 9, 2021, at age 60 from the effects and complications of epilepsy. Dave’s remains were scattered by his family in the Salt Lake City mountain canyons area.

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