Yet over the years, this graduate of the Baltimore Polytechnic and Lehigh University, has felt strongly about giving back to the community in which he was raised. For more than five decades, David has dedicated his time, leadership and support to The Associated and to strengthening Baltimore’s Jewish community.  

Here are 10 things to know about David.  

From father to son. 

His earliest introduction to The Associated was as a teenager. For many years, he worked as the lifeguard at the Park Heights JCC in the 1960s. His father, Herbert, was also a lifeguard at the JCC in the 1930s, when it was located downtown on West Monument Street.  

David began his career building treehouses. 

Imbued early with an entrepreneurial spirit, as a child, David built treehouses for the kids in the neighborhood for $25.00.  At 12, he started going with his father to job sites. At 14, long before he could legally drive a car, he was a heavy equipment operator, driving a D 9 bulldozer during the construction of Summit Park.  He was later a carpenter and brick layer for his dad’s company, HMH Construction, when they built the Greengate community. 

His ambition was to go into the building business with his father, but there were seven sons among the HMH partners, and his mother gave him excellent advice. She said: 

‘You need to go out on your own and make your own way in the world.’  

Excellent advice, indeed. After graduating from Lehigh University with a BS in civil engineering and two master’s degrees in business, he founded his engineering company, D. S. Thaler & Assoc., LLC at the age 25.

The firm is involved with projects of extraordinary complexity and has now designed more than 4,000 residential, commercial, industrial and institutional land development assignments throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. It has extensive experience with large, difficult and environmentally complex projects and has created many innovative designs.   

For instance, David invented “Super Silt Fence,” a technique that is now an international standard, originally for use on Rockland Run, a community the firm designed on Falls Rd. The firm will turn 50 next October. 

Giving back for 50 consecutive years 

It all began when his then client, Michael Yerman, called to ask him for a donation. He immediately said yes, believing in the work The Associated does for the Jewish community and  has now contributed to the Annual Campaign for 50 consecutive years. 

Growing Up in Jewish Baltimore 

“I was very lucky to grow up in Jewish Baltimore which provided the foundation for my modest success. The Associated was a part of that.” 

From newcomer to veteran: A 40-year run on The Associated’s Real Estate Committee 

It was in the 70s when Bob Weinberg invited him to become involved. At the time, The Associated was developing the JCC’s Owings Mills campus. Over the years, he has lent his expertise to projects across The Associated network. Now decades later, he is still contributing, and his firm is a corporate sponsor. 

“When I started, I was the youngest member of the real estate committee. Now I am by far the oldest and longest serving,” he jokes. 

He was the Pipe Major of the Baltimore Police Department Ceremonial Unit and performed at many events and funerals for police and firefighters killed in action. Most movingly, he says, he has also piped funerals at Arlington National Cemetery.     

Perhaps uniquely, he also bagpiped during Oheb Shalom’s Simchat Torah services, leading the torah and congregation down Park Heights Avenue with the Rabbis in kilts.  

David jokes that he’s the world’s greatest Jewish bagpiper but that’s not really true – there are at least four bagpipe bands in Israel. 

About a year later, he was fixed up on a blind date by his friend Lynn Weinberg to whom he had sold a house.  He went to the date’s apartment on Old Court Road, knocked on the door and when the door opened, he was shocked to see that she was the very same girl that he had seen at the dance studio the year before 

Their meeting must have been fated for they dated for about a year and have now been married for 46 wonderful years. 

National recognition 

In 2019, David won the award as the top professional engineer in the United States given by the National Society of Professional Engineers. This award especially meant a lot he says, because “it wasn’t for working on high-profile projects like the Mars landing or inventing the MRI. It was for simply designing and building livable, sustainable communities, many right here at home in northwest Baltimore. “It made me very proud to be recognized by my peers.” 

David has also received numerous lifetime achievement awards and holds the Distnguished Service Cross, Maryland’s highest military honor for his service with the 121^st Maryland Engineer Regiment. 

He’s published five books on Baltimore journalist and essayist, H.L. Mencken who also attended the Baltimore Polytechnic graduating in 1896 

David’s last book was published with Larry Gibson, the first African American professor at UVA and the biographer of Justice Thurgood Marshall. David, wrote the section on whether Mencken was antisemitic, and Gibson wrote the part on whether he was racist. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken’s biographer wrote the introduction. 

What did they decide? The book is called Mencken’s Prejudices Debunked.