David Youngstrom, a former bookseller and sales rep, died on March 16. He was 78.
Youngstrom briefly attended Hobart College, leaving in 1967. He received Conscientious Objector status A for his stand against the Vietnam War and was placed in the Alternative Service program for two years, serving in the addiction units of several hospitals in New York City, before transferring to the Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital bookstore.
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This began a lifelong career path in the publishing industry. Youngstrom also pursued an interest in music writing by knocking on the door of the home "office" of Crawdaddy!, the first magazine devoted to serious rock criticism. The publisher hired him on the spot to be the office manager--one of the magazine's first paid employees.
In 1970, he and his wife, Frances, moved to Denver, Colo., to start a family. He continued his career as a bookseller, first at All Books, then for a decade at Gordon's Wholesale Books. In the early '70s, while juggling parenthood and a career, he fed his passion for music through a moonlighting gig as the rock critic for the Denver Post.
In 1983, the family left Denver for Ann Arbor, Mich., where Youngstrom became a sales rep for Harper & Row, then returned to New York to finish his tenure with the newly christened HarperCollins as national account manager.
He retired in 2006 and moved back to Denver, closing out his book career working at the city's oldest independent bookseller, the Hermitage Bookshop.
Youngstrom's obituary noted that he loved to learn about the world through traveling, but "one of his favorite places to be was sitting on his couch, sharing a book with his children and, later in his life, his beloved grandchildren."