It is with great sadness that we announce David Howard Nixon, age 74, passed away peacefully on September 15, 2025, at Rockland Place after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease.
A long-time Wilmington resident, David was born in Kansas but raised in Auburn and Woodstown, Salem County, New Jersey. David attended Oldsmans Township Grammar School and played football at Woodstown High School, where he graduated in 1970.
David attended the University of Kansas and later returned to Wilmington, where he continued his education at the University of Delaware while working for General Motors Boxwood Plant. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and went on to become a real estate agent before eventually helping his friend Vance Kershner start Labware Inc., dedicating 35 years to the company as the office administrator.
David was a friend, a colleague, a mentor, a brother, a husband, and a father. He lived the kind of life we all hope to have for ourselves. He had a love for traveling, sailing, scuba diving, tennis, hunting, fishing, and singing. But above all, he loved playing the guitar. Music was a part of him; that was clear to anyone who had the pleasure of seeing him play. Family meant everything to David; he was the kind of person who would move mountains for those he loved. His brilliant mind, adventurous spirit, and infectious smile will be profoundly missed.
David leaves behind his beloved and devoted wife Colleen, daughter Hunter Grace, and stepson Joseph N Grillo III, along with his three sisters, Valerie (Jim) Caufield, Michele (Rex) Hay, and Sheila (Robert) Gluck.
The family would like to express gratitude to the staff and medical professionals at Rockland Place for all their love and support over the last 10 months, especially the Pathway team. David was never one to be coddled and his willful spirit truly gave the staff a run for their money.In addition I would like to extend a gracious thank you to VITAS Hospice who treated David with respect and true professional love.
It is with love that David’s daughter Hunter offers this poem in tribute to her father
‘In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now.
Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
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