David was born on June 24, 1981 in Marshalltown and was raised alongside his siblings, Paul, Kendra and Jason by their parents, Toby and Janice Godfrey.

As a child, David always loved spending time with his grandparents at their farm, planting and harvesting their garden, which is where he developed his love of horticulture and gardening that carried over into his teen and adult years.

Horticulture was only one of the many special talents and interests that David had. He won several different awards for pottery artwork he made and displayed at different art shows in our community. Many pieces of his pottery are still displayed amongst all of our homes to this day.

He also was a self-taught musician and had the talent to hear a song, walk over to his guitar or the piano and within a half an hour, be able to play the song back without written music.

As a teen, David would spend countless hours building and working on computers and would set the garage up for major “LAN parties” for his friends (we were reminded David was unbeatable in Mario Kart!).

David graduated from Marshalltown High School in 1999. After high school, he attended Iowa State University for a year then decided to take a break to enjoy his twenties. He moved to Kansas City and then to Peoria, Illinois, both of which he worked at a couple upscale sushi restaurants, where he really enjoyed meeting new people as well as learning to make sushi. In fact, we remember one Thanksgiving he was back, he insisted on making all of us sushi instead of the traditional turkey dinner. His love of sushi never did die after that.

In 2007, David returned to Iowa and went to DMACC, where he was a member of the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society for 2 years. He went on to graduate from Iowa State University with his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 2011.

Upon graduation, David worked at Iowa State University and also spent some time developing an application which was similar to Uber app. His most proud accomplishment during his career was at his latest employer, Xpanxion, in Ames, Iowa, where he maintained the bottom scroll of the Weather Channel which was owned by the IBM Corporation.

David was a contemplative soul who enjoyed philosophical conversations, observing others, as well as nature and animals, cooking and gaming. He loved spending time with his niece and nephews and hearing of their accomplishments and had a soft spot for dogs, especially Baby and Cash.

Those left to cherish his memory are his parents, Toby and Janice Godfrey; siblings: Paul Godfrey, Kendra Godfrey-Davis, and Jason Godfrey; his niece, Kallie Davis and nephews: Cole Davis and Jackson Godfrey. He was preceded in death by his grandparents: Glen and Rosa Godfrey and Urban and Colleen Kunkel.

— Lovingly written by David’s family