Dave McClure

Lake Tahoe’s ultimate maître d’ has died. David Alan McClure was special and one of a kind.

He died Feb. 24, 2018, of organ failure at Renown Medical Center in Reno. He was 67.

In a 2012 story about Mr. McClure in Lake Tahoe News he said, “My job is to change people’s experiences. You never know who will be standing in front of you. People plan their whole vacations around who they can see and when they can see them.”

Mr. McClure moved to the mountains in 1979 when the Park Tahoe Hotel opened, which then became Caesars Tahoe and eventually MontBleu, where he has worked for 36 years and had been maître d’ of the showroom.

On Oct. 7, 1950, he became the first born child of Charles and Florence Engstrom McClure or Martinez, Calif. They moved to San Francisco where they lived in the student housing Quonset huts while his father got his teaching degree. Four years later they moved to San Anselmo where the family lived in an Asian pagoda style home until 2016.

As a child, Mr. McClure participated in many sports and Boy Scouts. He graduated from Sir Francis Drake High School in 1968. He then attended College of Marin, University of Hawaii and UC Davis, where he was a student and teacher of histology.

While in Davis, Mr. McClure had three consecutive days off, which enabled him to have his first ski pass at Squaw Valley in 1971. He immediately became a mountain man. He decided not to pursue a medical degree, and spent two years at City College of San Francisco where he earned a degree in hotel and restaurant management. While in San Francisco, he worked at the St. Francis Hotel on Union Square. Then he worked for a short time at the new MGM Grand in Reno.

He was a lifelong fan of the San Francisco Giants, 49ers and Warriors.

Mr. McClure had a huge circle of close friends and acquaintances who have great memories of skiing and hiking in Tahoe, and a crew of “salty dogs” that spent hours plying the waters of Tahoe on the sailboat he and his boat partners owned and enjoyed. Being his friend was a gift of love and enormous generosity never to be forgotten.

He is survived by his four younger siblings: Patricia, Glenn, Carol and Donald, and their children, as well as his cousins in the North Bay, Judy, Kenny, Clayton, Linda, Robert and Joanne; as well as his legion of friends.

A burial service will be on April 5 at 11am at Valley Memorial Park, 650 Bugeia Lane, Novato.