{"id":8222,"date":"2026-06-18T13:34:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mainemaritime.edu\/alumni\/?p=8222"},"modified":"2026-06-23T13:38:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T13:38:26","slug":"david-a-ruberti-69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mainemaritime.edu\/alumni\/eight-bells\/david-a-ruberti-69\/","title":{"rendered":"David A. Ruberti ’69"},"content":{"rendered":"
Dave’s dead. Have a nice day.<\/p>\n

Those of us who knew David Ruberti won’t be surprised that this was how he wanted the text of his obituary to read, start to finish. However, an obituary is meant for the living, and for their collective memory of the person who’s gone, so Dave won’t entirely get his way.<\/p>\n

You may have known him as Rubber Tubee, Ruberticus, Rubertolini, the Curmudgeon, or any of a number of other nicknames: people with colorful personalities tend to accumulate these. Whatever you called him, you knew a man who was a tireless (or, if you like, indefatigable) extrovert; he prized his friends, uncomfortable humor, obscure trivia, a well-aged tune, local history, and Jolly Ranchers. He was tack-sharp, a card-carrying member of MENSA (and he wanted you to know it). He carried a bottle of 151 proof rum to social gatherings and offered it around (it’s unclear whether anyone ever took a sip). He loved women, was married and divorced twice, and wryly referred to himself as “the chick magnet”.<\/p>\n

Born to George and Roberta (n\u00e9e Smith) Ruberti on April 19, 1947, Dave was a Belfast local through and through. He was a student in its schools (he graduated from Crosby High School in 1965, the last year of enrollment there), a summer employee at City Park (he remembered emptying buckets of chlorine tablets into the saltwater pool), and enjoyed the broiler festival and sledding down winter-closed streets with his pals.<\/p>\n

After high school, Dave enrolled at Maine Maritime Academy, studied and caroused, and graduated with his 3rd Assistant Engineer’s license. This trajectory put him out at sea for a few years as a Texaco employee around the East and Gulf Coasts of the US, even through the Panama Canal to the West Coast. Serendipitously, he was assigned to the tanker Texaco North Dakota. Both his father and his grandfather were Texaco consignees in Belfast, and as a child Dave was given a model, made as a promotional item, of this same tanker; he kept the model on permanent display in his home.<\/p>\n

Following this time aboard ship, he decided that a life at sea was not for him. He worked variously as a carpenter, maintenance man at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and a piano mover for Viner Music in Bangor. He lived for around twenty years in Oxford, Massachusetts. During this period, he worked for Warren Pump-again finding himself at sea-servicing marine pumps all over the world. These travels produced several of the artifacts that later decorated his home.<\/p>\n

He kept his Oxford house in such pristine condition that it inspired a bidding war when he listed it and finally cut ties to Massachusetts, having decided to return to Maine. During the last five years of his working life, he took a role at seaweed processor FMC in Rockland, where his talent for innovation led to improvements in their equipment, bumped efficiency, and saved the company a lot of money. He retired in 2010.<\/p>\n

During the later years, he had no trouble filling his time; his thirst for experience, entertainment, and information kept him occupied. He travelled in Europe, South Africa, and Russia, and his longer and more unusual trips became permanently embedded in his mind; the world fascinated him, particularly the unfamiliar, the peculiar. He made a brief appearance onstage in Northport Music Theater’s Funny Girl in 2012, sat on the board of Belfast’s Senior College (in addition to enrolling every term), and built a two-story outhouse on Pleasant Island in Penobscot Bay. From 2016, he served as vice president of Belfast Historical Society, put in time as a greeter\/docent, lent his technical expertise, and delivered annual illustrated talks at Belfast Library. Also beginning in 2016, he volunteered several hours a week at Penobscot Marine Museum as a cataloger extraordinaire, amateur historian and researcher, and as an unofficial docent in PMM’s photo archives.<\/p>\n

It’s a truism that interesting people have many interests, and Dave was proof of this. His passion for music, cinema, stories, feats of human engineering, and travel accreted around him in collections of CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, books, digital and analog photos, and the PowerPoint presentations he created (and in some cases never presented). His eagerness to draw other people into his peculiar world was always bubbling near the surface.<\/p>\n

Those who only brushed up against Dave’s exterior may have decided not to look any further. It would have been easy to decide that his vulgar sense of humor, impatience with incompetence, blunt observations, and hunger for the spotlight were not shoals worth navigating. Those brave enough to laugh them off came to see these foibles as his registered trademarks and essential to his rough charm. If he drew you in, you learned that at heart, the Curmudgeon was a warm guy who loved his connections with people. Those connections are still here, Dave, even though you’ve disappeared from our sight. We’ll miss you and keep you alive; fare thee well, and may the bluebird of happiness drop a cold jingle bell down your jammies.<\/p>\n

Surviving family include his sister, Susan Ruberti of Belfast; his brother-in-law, Emile St. Andre of Belfast; his niece Nicole Green of Adger, Alabama; and his nephew William St. Andre of Guam. Dave was predeceased by his sister Patricia St. Andre, and by his parents, Roberta and George.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave’s dead. Have a nice day. Those of us who knew David Ruberti won’t be surprised that this was how he wanted the text of his obituary to read, start to finish. However, an obituary is meant for the living, and for their collective memory of the person who’s gone, so Dave won’t entirely get […]<\/p>\n Read More...<\/a>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eight-bells"],"yoast_head":"\r\nDavid A. 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