Duncan Prentice – Embodying the Danos Purpose
In the early morning hours of December 27, 2023, Duncan Prentice was tragically killed in a car accident. Ducan was 28 years old and an employee of Danos. I’d like to honor this young man and his family by telling the story of how he has left an indelible positive impact on the Danos organization in just a short time of working here. Duncan worked in our coastal restoration group. He was managing projects related to the 3D printing of artificial reef material to stabilize shorelines and restore our coast. He was instrumental in setting up the operations to efficiently print and produce the “Cajun Coral” structures at our Amelia facility. He found great satisfaction in a job that combined his passion for finding solutions to restore our coast with 3D printing and improving manufacturing processes.
On December 27, I received a call at 6:10 am from Reed Pere, Danos VP of operations. A call at that time of the morning is usually not good. But this call was worse than I imagined. At that point, the details were not all clear and confirmed, but we suspected that Duncan was involved in a serious vehicle accident. Not much later, we had confirmation of this terrible news.
What happened next was an amazing display of what we strive for at Danos around “setting the standard for care for people.” It so happens that several of our employees are very close family friends to Duncan and his parents. These people immediately moved into action to care for, support and love this family during the most difficult circumstances. To be clear, I am sure these individuals would have cared for the Prentice family just as well had they never worked for Danos. I feel blessed that we have people with this sort of character on our team. An organization is simply a collection of its people, and these are the kinds of people that make us great.
The day before the funeral, after some discussion with Reed as to whether it would be appropriate for me to visit the Prentice family at their home, I decided to go. My hope (albeit with a great feeling of inadequacy) was to offer some small comfort to them, knowing that Duncan’s work family was grieving with them. I arrived to find his mom and Dad, one of his sisters, a grandma and a few other close friends sitting around the kitchen table. Duncan’s parents shared a few stories about how much he loved his job and was thriving in what he was doing. I was blown away by how grateful they were for his work.
Not long after I had arrived, an army of Duncan’s friends showed up to offer support to the family. Then the phone rang; someone else was calling to check in. Although I had only been there a few minutes, I felt like I should get out of the way and let the next wave of people offer their support. I hugged Derrick and Melanie (Duncan’s parents) with the intention of leaving, but I could see on their faces they had more to say. They followed me to the front porch, where we stood for a long time as they shared story after story of how much Duncan loved his job, the role Danos played in him finding his passion and purpose, his growing into a young man and finding his way, and how grateful the Prentice family was for what Danos had offered to their son. The feeling that I needed to say much of anything faded as I realized I was there to listen to them reflect on the journey of their son finding his passion in work and Danos' role in that. We ended with a hug and a prayer on their front porch that day.
The next day at the funeral service, mentions of how fulfilled Duncan was in his work continued during the eulogy by his godfather, the priest who officiated the mass, and so many others I spoke with when I was there.
As I drove away from that service, thinking about how I hoped to offer something in the way of support to the family, I realized that Duncan’s life, the show of love from their community, and the expressions of gratitude from his parents were a far greater blessing to me than anything I was able to give. The celebration and reflection of Duncan’s life was the strongest confirmation I could have imagined that the Danos purpose to, “Honor God. Develop great people to solve big challenges for our customers and communities,” is good and impacts people and communities. It was a powerful motivator for me to continue doing what we do to create opportunities for people.
It’s also a reminder of how this purpose works. We don’t bring people in and teach them how to live the Danos purpose and make them great. We find great people whose lives, passions, experiences and character fit the Danos purpose, and then great people do great things. And that was Duncan Prentice – a fantastic human being developing and applying his gifts and passions to solve the challenges we have before us. Thank you, Prentice family, for sharing Duncan with Danos.