Credit Courtesy of David McClure Long time Bristol Bay resident David Eric McClure, former director of the regional housing authority, died Wednesday Feb. 3 in Anchorage. He was 66.
Born Sept. 14, 1954 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and raised in the northern Laurel Valley part of Ligonier Valley, PA, David Eric McClure was a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania and the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University. He came to Alaska in 1979 as a VISTA Volunteer and worked for 14 years as the village administrator for the Kvichak River community of Levelock. McClure and the village council worked together to build capacity for federal housing project decisions, requiring locally built homes rather than prefabricated federal housing, and directing building lot decisions. There were objections but their efforts prevailed. McClure later became Executive Director of the Bristol Bay Housing Authority in Dillingham and served in that position for 21 years. Before his retirement in 2014, the Alaska Legislature, with encouragement from District 37 Representative Bryce Edgmon, enacted a proclamation thanking McClure for his more than 40 years of service to the state.