From Urban Planning to Playwriting: One Man's Remarkable Journey
David Preece's life reads like a series of fascinating short stories bound together by themes of creativity, adaptability, and service to others. Growing up in a tiny Utah farming town called Pleasant View with just 900 residents, Preece admits his mother always said he was "plotting to escape" from an early age. That wanderlust led him through an extraordinary professional journey spanning seven states and multiple careers.After completing graduate studies in urban planning, Preece's professional path took him from Park City, Utah (where he developed the Deer Valley Master Plan) to Wisconsin, Washington DC, New York City (where he crossed paths with Donald Trump's development projects), San Francisco, Los Angeles, and finally New Hampshire. As a planner, he describes himself not as someone who dictates where buildings go, but as an educator and facilitator who helps communities make informed decisions about development. His guiding philosophy: "For a master plan to be effective, successful, you've got to have buy-in from the town, the city, at the very beginning. It's got to be their plan."Parallel to his planning career, Preece nurtured his creative side through playwriting, screenwriting, and filmmaking. After his father's death in 1980, he began writing plays to process his grief. This creative outlet eventually expanded to include seven produced plays, six published with royalty companies, and several screenplays. When diagnosed with leukemia around 2000 and given seven years to live, Preece responded by creating a short film called "Lunch with Eddie" that was shown at over 30 film festivals.Perhaps his most heartwarming creative venture began when he and his partner adopted a rescue Scottish Terrier named Higgins. This led to the creation of the popular "Mr. Higgins" children's book series, with the fourth book scheduled for release this fall. Preece describes the joy of having strangers approach him about how much their children love his books as "magical" and "a really rewarding experience."Now serving his second term in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Preece approaches politics with the same creativity and thoughtfulness that characterized his other careers. His political philosophy is refreshingly simple: "It's not about me, it's about the people who I'm representing." As he continues to pursue new writing projects alongside his legislative duties, David Preece's remarkable journey reminds us that reinvention is possible at any stage of life, and that creativity can find expression in countless ways.
Ireland