Gazette file photo
David H. Shayt, who died at 56 on Nov. 4, was a devoted advocate for Olde Towne. He's shown here in 2001 with the old City of Gaithersburg bell on display in front of City Hall.
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David Shayt, the longtime Gaithersburg volunteer and museum curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., died Nov. 4 of multiple myeloma at his Olde Towne home on DeSellum Avenue. He was 56.
Shayt is survived by his wife of 24 years, Suzanne Shayt, a French teacher at Gaithersburg High School and daughter Emma Chait, 21, who recently changed her last name back to its original spelling to honor her father's family heritage. The name goes back to ancestors in Riga, Latvia, she said.
"He was just such a source of information forever," said Cindy Hines, Gaithersburg's Olde Towne Coordinator. "If David didn't have the answers, if he didn't know it, he could certainly find it for you. But it was rare that he didn't have an answer, that's for sure."
Shayt helped get a historic bell outside City Hall and trains at the community museum and helped the city's Community Development Corporation explore Olde Towne revitalization. He chaired Gaithersburg's Olde Towne Advisory Committee for seven years until 2007, when he stepped down due to illness.
Residents could often spot him passionately advocating at City Council meetings for the arts, education or an Olde Towne enterprise zone — or walking toward the Olde Towne train station, wearing his signature Burberry scarf, dark glasses and fedora.
"He just loved to hear the whistle of that train," Emma Chait said.
A believer in public art in public spaces, Shayt pushed for a clock tower slated for a future brick plaza at the corner of Summit and East Diamond avenues. The project years in development is meant to be a focal point for the heart of the city.
Meticulous and passionate, Shayt insisted on acquiring a $10,000 1915 Howard "round top" weight-driven pendulum-regulated time-and-strike-mechanical clock, one of the more well-known mechanical clocks of the time, said Assistant City Manager Tony Tomasello. An electric clock with motorized workings would not do. He insisted on the real thing, purchased in New Hampshire and restored by expert restorers from Maine his family visited on vacation, his daughter said.
"To someone on the ground, it probably wouldn't make a difference," Tomasello said. "But to a clock expert…historically it was important."
