Dr. Daniel Irvin “Danny” Carey
Dr. Daniel Irvin Carey (“Danny”) passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, on July 27th at the University of Kentucky Chandler hospital. He was 81 years old.
Danny was born in 1944 at a US naval base in Oakland California. A precocious youth, he excelled at baseball and mathematics, and earned a full scholarship to the St Louis Country Day School at the age of 12. After middle school, his family moved to Illinois, where Danny learned to play ice hockey on the frozen streets of Pekin.
In 1961, Danny moved to KY and enrolled at Woodford County high school. He played baseball for the Jackets, and during that time, refined his tastes and his billiards game at Wilson’s Pool Hall in downtown Versailles. Danny graduated high school in 1961, and began his college career at Kentucky Wesleyan. After two years at Wesleyan, he left school for the Naval reserves, where he served aboard the USS Glacier, a naval research vessel and ice-breaker, in service of operation “deep freeze,” whose primary mission was scientific research in Antarctica at McMudo station. Later in life, his young children convinced themselves that he had fought in the Cold War. After his naval adventures, he returned to finish his physics degree at Wesleyan, where he met many lifelong friends.
After his undergraduate studies, Danny moved to Texas to work in the petroleum industry.
Perhaps because of his proximity to Houston and his fascination with NASA, he came back to Kentucky to further his education and get his Master’s degree in Mathematics at WKU.
After his Master’s degree, he enrolled as a Ph.D candidate in Mathematics at Northwestern University. Ironically, despite two tours of duty in Antarctica, Chicago was too cold for him, so he returned to the University of Kentucky and began working on his Ph.D in Agricultural Engineering. This was the best and luckiest decision he ever made. The Spring after he returned to Kentucky, while reading in his hammock, he noticed a young lady next door changing the oil on an old Chevy. He fell in love and married Susan Nave in 1974. They were married for 51 years.
They finally settled in their home in Versailles in 1979 and have lived there ever since. There they raised four children, several cats, and a vegetable garden. A professional engineer and academic by day, you could reliably find Danny after work in his preferred office: a hammock in the back yard, reading Tolstoy, whistling Beethoven, or finishing off the day’s New York Times crossword puzzle.
Danny, a dedicated engineer who led a household of six and worked for numerous engineering firms, was continuously on the lookout for new challenges. His diverse pursuits included studying German in Austria, playing the piano, participating in bridge tournaments, running a marathon, writing editorials, publishing a book, donating to various causes, and taking postdoctoral elective classes at the University of Kentucky for over a decade. Beneath his complex exterior lay his deep roots in Kentucky, where during his teens and twenties, he spent summers on the family farm cutting and hanging tobacco and bailing hay. Although he eventually traded his tobacco spear for a PhD and a computer, the farming ethos remained a fundamental part of his identity.
Danny was survived by his wife Susan, his children Mike (Harriet), Pete (Brandi), Beth (Weston), and Daniel (Nicki), his grandchildren Lily and Mason Boone, Hunter and Ricky Carey; Joe, Ben, Will, Zel, Agnes, Max, Maria Carey; Lucy Amos, his brothers Mark and Mike (Joyce) Carey and sister Jennifer Falk, along with nieces Julie Falk and Marianne Wilburn. He is preceded in death by his parents Elias Irvin Carey and Elizabeth Fishback Carey.
Services
Visitation – Friday August 1st, 5-7pm Blackburn and Ward Funeral Home, Versailles, KY
Funeral Services – Saturday August 2nd 11am- St Johns Church Versailles, KY
Interment – Rose Crest Cemetery
Memorial contributions suggested to
The Monica Combs Memorial Scholarship through
The Blue Grass Community Foundation
499 East High Street Suite 112
Lexington KY. 40507
info@bgcf.org
(859) 255-3343
https://bgcf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/list