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Leader Bio: David Foster

Photo of David Foster (Gannd) I grew up in a small town in northeast Ohio and was raised in the United Methodist faith until I joined the United States Navy. I started appearing in the Tucson pagan community in 1980 after completing my six years of enlisted military service. This is also about the same time I found the Society for Creative Anachronism. The SCA is a large medieval re-creation organization. They needed me to select a persona for awards and participation. I was interested in being a Druid as it fit my needs at the time while also being involved with both the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

This also started my religious path and research into the various Druidic groups around in my quest to be knowledgeable about such things.. I quickly became active in both of the SCA and pagan communities as a solitary Druid while continually studying and crafting. Over the years in the SCA I have attained their highest Arts award, the Laurel, which is a peerage. I also have been active in the past with another medieval re-creation group called the Empire of Chivalry and Steel (ECS) in which I am member #10 and have attained their highest Arts award, the Order of the White Feather. It is a much smaller group compared to the SCA and I am not at all active as I once was in the organization due to time constraints and other diversions.

I met Isaac Bonewits in the pagan community in 1983/1984 time frame and became familiar with his work. In 1986 I became a member of the Ár nDraíocht Féin, A Druid Fellowship, Inc., the religious organization that he founded. I was among the initial recorded group as member #19 in the ADF. In the middle nineties I was continually providing multi-denominational wedding and funeral services for the SCA, pagan and Renaissance Faire community under the auspices of using the basic ADF ritual setup and an ordainment of the Universal Life Church. This is the route most general Neopagan clergy have to take to receive some form of public credentials if allowed by their state government. Having a large local community needing and using these services is also quite helpful.

A number of my friends and I formed the Sonoran Sunrise Grove in the ADF in late 1999. I was elected the founding Senior Druid of the Grove. I was continually re-elected for the Senior Druid position every year until 2007. My personal goal was and still is to make the Grove a viable, very active, public long-term group in the Tucson pagan community – and nationally. I have also served as ADF Administrator, an appointed position that oversees and monitors the business practices within the religious group. I am currently serving a term as the Southwest Regional Druid representative promoting ADF to the public in festival, congregational and solitary formats.

Another pagan organization that I was heavily involved with between 1988 to 1994 was the Pagan Arizona Network (PAN) when I moved from Tucson to Phoenix for those years. This has allowed me to become well known in the Phoenix valley Arizona pagan organizations. I then became involved with other Tucson pagan organizations when I moved back to Tucson in 1994. I became a Corresponding Priest for the Mother Earth Ministriesas of February of 2002. It is a religious prison outreach organization based in Arizona. I had performed this function in ADF temporarily for over a year when I was Administrator until someone else was appointed. I also became quite active in the Tucson Area Wiccan and Pagan Network (TAWN) organization in Tucson, Arizona. I have served several annual terms on their Board of Directors in various capacities.

In my non-religious life I am a Senior Multi-Disciplined Development Engineer working for Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona. I work with the latest technologies and designs on a variety of programs there. I have worked for them from 1980 to 1988 and again from 1994 to the present. I hold Associate Degrees in Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics as well as having a great deal of previous military electronics education and training. My hobbies, when I have time for them, are brewing meads, leather craft, silverwork and costuming. I also work at and attend some of the science fiction conventions in Arizona. They usually pull me into discussion panels in both religion and technology topics or to perform workshops where I can teach my handicrafts.

About my unusual nickname: I have used my "Gannd" nickname for close to thirty years in many organizations. I find it useful in specifically identifying myself this way rather that using my first name only. Even at my current workplace there are three other "Daves" that are always within twenty feet of me. For the medieval re-creation community, my full SCA name is Master Davan inn Spaki called Gannd the Druid, OL (minus the additional lower level alphabet soup awards). My ECS name is basically the same with a bit of different alphabet soup.

For a quick summary I will always be a public Druid with the attitude of the "Church" is where you walk and the only two things that we leave behind when we pass through the Veil are those that we teach with our mind and that which we craft with our hands. What happens to all of us afterwards is a theological discussion worthy of Druids.

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