One of my best friends. I’m heartbroken. He invited me for tacos last week and I was too busy.
Don’t ever be too busy for a friend.
Burt was a wonderful teacher. He put so much into DMS. Sad that I was not able to take more of his classes. He will be missed.
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Could someone post a photo of this individual to help some of us with our failing memory retrieval? I know I have interacted with him, but I keep picturing the other Bert.
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DMS is a wonderful combination of creative, happy, busy, upbeat, stormy, inventive, crazy, chaotic and so much more. Burt seemed to somehow take in the many pulses of this place and understand it all. He once told me that he saw his job as discovering what excited individuals and then directing that energy to improve DMS.
I only joined DMS last fall. In these few short months Burt became a friend. But also a guide in this journey. I miss him already. I think this is a loss that I will feel for much longer than I have known Burt.
Burt, Thank You.
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Oh my goodness. I just got to know him, and found him wonderfully engaging and very approachable. He clearly had a passion for helping people learn.
May he rest in peace. He will definitely be missed. 
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This is very sad news. I wish I had made the time to go to DMS to catch up. Burt was a wonderful teacher and leader and put so much energy into DMS. He was fun to talk to and was always learning and doing something.
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This is heartbreaking, i worked closely with Burt for years, he was great to work with and overall just a really nice and thoughtful person. Losing him hits hard, the space won’t be the same without him.
He leaves quite a legacy from all of the people he taught and got started on their maker journey.
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I’ll miss him. He was a good instructor with skills and that witty banter. What a great guy.
And he always brought cookies to class!
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I grew up in a tiny conservative bubble. Everyone inside that little bubble pretty much looked and thought like me. I was never exposed to any diversity of significance until I got to Dallas Makerspace. While I worked on the process document for the Woodshop CNC Router, which we affectionately called “Frankenpoko”–a name Burt hated, and insisted that we call it the Tabletop CNC Router–he was the one person who got me to expand my perspective wider to think like those people who were not so much like me. It wasn’t good enough that the document made sense to me, it had to make sense to as many people as possible. It was a stretch, because I wasn’t accustomed to changing how I thought about things. I’ve changed the way I think about a lot of things since being at DMS, and especially since Burt became my friend. It will be along time before I can work on that machine without welling up.
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I would like to start a fund to pay for quality materials for a woodworker or group of woodworkers to make some kind of wood and laser memorial for Burt for the shop . I can’t design it without crying , but someone should .
Goodbye, friend .
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I don’t visit the Space often or with any kind of regularity yet almost every time Burt would stop to talk about goings-on both personal and with DMS, try to set that hook so I’d get more involved again.
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I don’t do anything without AI anymore. Burt wouldn’t mind - he was a huge fan of AI.
I can route the entire thing in light wood (maple or oak), then seal, spray paint and sand off the top layer, leaving the routed areas dark. Then we can laser the tools.
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If anyone else has pictures of Britton, please share them here or in a PM.
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We have all of that wood in Hatcher’s. Might be the time to bust it out.
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That is great . I think that is a fitting memorial .
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I’d love it if one of the talented cutting board folks could glue up an appropriately-sized blank. I haven’t scoped where it could go and I’d guess that needs either board or woodshop approval.
I feel like it should be pretty large - maybe 18-24” wide. Cool if it would fit over the double doors but again, I haven’t scoped it out.
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That is a an amazing and very thoughtful idea.
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I think a fitting place would be above the double doors into the woodshop room.
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It merits epoxy or inlay in the lettering and the DMS logo.
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