David Leon Alles

David Leon Alles died in Bellingham, Washington on March 5, 2025. He was born in Holdrege, Nebraska to Kenneth Alles and Lucy Dunlap. He grew up in Beaver City and Lincoln. After graduating from high school in 1964, David joined the Navy and was trained as an electronics technician. He served aboard the destroyer the USS George K. MacKenzie whose homeport was in Yokosuka, Japan.
After three years in the Navy, David settled in Boulder County, Colorado where he worked as a carpenter framing houses with his father, Ken Alles, and raised a daughter and step-son with his first wife, Channa. He loved the out-of-doors and spent many hours hiking, bird watching and riding his bicycle in the Colorado Rockies. He was a founding member of the Boulder County Nature Association and served on the Board of Directors of the Colorado Field Ornithologists.
David had a wide-ranging curiosity about the world he lived in. His intellectual interests included ecology and evolutionary biology, philosophy and biology, the history of science, and cosmology. In 1984 he returned to the University of Colorado to complete an undergraduate degree that he had started in the late 1960s. David graduated in 1987 with a BS in Biology. While at the university, he met his second wife, Carol. They eventually settled in Bellingham, Washington where David earned a Masters in Science Education from Western Washington University. He taught biology, chemistry and physics at the high school level and biology at the college level. David became an accomplished lecturer and developed a college-level biology course that used evolution as a framework for teaching introductory biology.
David had a fine sense of humor, was an excellent cook, an avid reader and life-long learner, and a good companion. He is survived by his wife Carol (Trent), his daughter Tamara (Del Monte), his granddaughter Winona (Adams) and many friends and family members.
In David's memory, please consider a donation to Doctors Without Borders or the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology.