On Tuesday April 1, 2003 AUSTIN PHILIP DEWILDE at his residence in Davidsonville, MD. Beloved husband of Joanne DeWilde, whom he married October 7, 2002; loving brother of Sandy Harding of Washington, PA; adored Poppy of granddaughter Kylie Anne Baker; fun loving uncle of Trey and Denise; brother-in-law of Roy Harding. He is also survived by many other loving relatives and friends.

Austin   (Audie) 60, a resident of Davidsonville for 30 years, died of cancer.  Born in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 3, 1942, Mr. DeWilde was a 1961 graduate of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School where he was an All-Metropolitan football player. A longtime employee of General Motors in Baltimore, he worked as an electrician until retiring in 2000. Prior to joining General Motors, Audie worked as a job foreman for Local 26 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Washington. He served in the National Guard as a military policeman from 1964 to 1968 in Washington. He was a member of the Davidsonville Flying Club. He enjoyed motorcycles, collecting model trains, pets, bluegrass music, building and flying model airplanes, a good cigar, raising chickens and his land at ''Austins's Acres'' in Davidsonville.
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A REMEMBRANCE of Austin DeWilde

Dear Classmates,

I've just open my e-mail to find this awful news.  Austin’s death at such a young age (!!!) is a shock, to put it mildly. A closure for which I’m unprepared. I haven’t had the privilege of seeing Austin for over 30 years – at our 10 year reunion.  We met each others' spouses and talked of getting together.  We never did.  But the unformulated presumption that we’d eventually meet up again in this life had an unchallenged inevitable character to it.  

Austin (he was always Austin, not Audie to many of us) and I had some great times together, some of which we miraculously survived. When he first got his driving permit, we took his mother’s Olds 98 out to the drag strip on what is now 270 and cranked it up to see how fast it might go.  In our junior year, we drove to Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break with three seniors (Gus Smith, Pete Countryman, and Rick Cheyfitz).  We manufactured elaborate stories of our lives as college students so as to make it with the college talent.  We were wild!!  One evening after dark, Austin and I had the car.  We got into a drag race.  We won.  But our lane ran out.  We hit a curb at about 90, flew into the air between a telephone pole and a cable, landing in a shallow ravine, upright, safe and sound, but badly shaken.  We were crazy!!  We stayed crazy for a while longer.  Austin bought a Triumph 650.  One of the first mandatory chores was to take it out to the drag strip and see how fast it would go (117 and it seemed that the flesh was being pulled off our faces).

We did other things too – played rec center football, hung out and argued about things, and that sort of stuff.  Jan’s right.  Austin was a loner.  But he wasn’t an asocial one.  He simply heard and marched to his own drummer.  He could be great fun in a group.

I haven’t often missed Austin over these many years because in my busy active life thoughts of him haven’t often surfaced.  Now I miss him.

My heart goes out to his family and all of those who had the privilege of staying in touch with Austin.

Jon  Wisman

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