NORTHAMPTON — Friends from all over the country, skipping previous plans and ignoring the below-zero cold outside, flocked to Northampton Saturday morning in order to tell stories of doughnuts and pumpkins and sculptures, fashioned of ice and hay.
They assembled to celebrate Dave Rothstein, an environmental lawyer and artist whose embrace of improbable schemes, heirloom New England mint and driveway snow art made him friends of such reach and variety that they filled the bottom level of Northampton’s Academy of Music, some 200 strong.
They celebrated Rothstein on a day that Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra proclaimed “Day of Dave here in the City of Northampton,” an honor at once fitting and not large enough, according to friends, to contain the effervescence with which Rothstein lived.
With sister Pamela Rothstein leading the tributes at The Academy, friends told stories of a man whose curiosity and wonder were ever-expanding and whose enthusiasm for “cockamamie” ideas was constantly attracting new people into his magnetic orbit, one defined by great personal attention and multiple hugs.
This was a man who spent three days in 2023 paddling a 700-pound pumpkin down the Deerfield and Connecticut Rivers for 40 miles. That was a Guinness Book of World Record at the time.
The same man built an igloo at his Florence Road home in Northampton and turned it into a speakeasy.
When it snowed, the curious showed up at Rothstein’s house. He was an artist with a shovel, carving repeated geometric patterns from the road to his garage door in the driveway snow. Photographs of those quick-to-disappear pieces of snow art were on display this weekend at a make-shift downtown Northampton gallery.
William Tuman, owner of River Valley Taekwondo at 25 Main St. where the work was displayed, told the audience that Rothstein was such a prolific photographer, pen and ink artist, and sculptor that he could hold multiple showings without displaying any work twice.
Fellow artist, Eileen Jager of Easthampton, told the assembled group of friends and family at The Academy that Rothstein’s brilliance was apparent with a glance. She asked people to look at the photo of Rothstein projected onto the Academy of Music screen.
“He looks like his eyes are on fire,” said Jager, who met Rothstein while installing a sculpture at Park Hill Orchards in Easthampton, where the co-owners Alane Hartley and Russell Braen invite artists to install their work amidst the apple trees every other year.
Hartley told the crowd that making a flying VW Beetle out of hay was not enough for Rothstein. His curiosity and questions turned to mint. Rothstein immersed himself in heirloom mint farming, taking his crop to Mt. Tom’s Homemade Ice Cream, where the owners would turn his produce into a mint flavor.
Tuman said later, after the celebration, that the world is full of many smart people and many kind ones, but few people are both — gentle and brilliant. And in Rothstein’s case — funny.
“All of our laugh lines are a little bit deeper because of his humor,” said Hartley.
Rothstein traveled the world, making friends at every stop. Before he died on Nov. 11 of last year, Rothstein was scheduled to go to Sweden to help sculpt an ice hotel. Snow sculpting, esoteric and arcane and fitting Rothstein’s sensibility, took the Worcester native to Canada, Alaska and even the furthest tip of Argentina in August.
One fellow snow sculptor told the crowd that on her flight to Argentina with Rothstein, she whispered to him that she would fly to the ends of the earth if he asked.
Beyond the sidewalk chalk art, the snow sculpting, the flying-car-hay sculptures and the pumpkin watercrafts, people shared that the genius that Rothstein spread no matter the place was his ability to make the person in front of him feel both seen and important.
As conservation lawyer at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Regional Office in Hadley, Rothstein worked with a variety of biologists, planners and lawyers.
“Everybody thought Dave was his best friend,” said Noah Kahn, a federal conservation planner and biologist.
Talking slowly to keep composed, Kahn told the crowd that Rothstein had little ego and operated with no judgement. “He taught me so much,” said Kahn. “He did nothing but put love into the world.”
Andrew Shelffo, an English teacher at the Williston-Northampton School, said he met Rothstein playing trivia at the old World War II Club on Conz Street in Northampton. The two became good friends, a regular occurrence in the Rothstein world.
“If Dave taught us anything it was that magic and wonder are right here,” said Shelffo.
Shelffo called the assembled “the lucky ones” for having been friends with Rothstein. “Thanks Dave,” he said, “for letting me be one of the lucky ones.”
Rothstein’s sister Pamela echoed Shelffo’s sentiment, when she spoke to her brother from the stage.
“I’m grateful that I got to play in your sunshine for a bit,” she said.