Dan Fredinburg's adventures took him from a marina on Norfork Lake to the earth's highest peak, Mount Everest in the Himalayas.
"He was just a bright star gone out way too soon," his former marina employer and fellow Arkansan Sandra Goldsby recalled Monday. "He loved living on the edge. He packed more life in those 33 years than most people pack in 76 years or whatever the life expectancy is. ... He was fearless."
Fredinburg, a Google executive who graduated from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs in 1999, died Saturday when an avalanche triggered by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake that killed thousands in Nepal slammed into his Mount Everest base camp.
Sandra and Richard Goldsby of Jordan, a tiny town near Mountain Home, owned Jordan Marina in 1998 and 1999, when Fredinburg was a teen and worked there in the summers as a self-proclaimed "dock rat." Fredinburg's LinkedIn biography says he "Hauled fish guts" and "cleaned boats" for the job.
Sandra Goldsby said the youngster worked at the marina, which they no longer own, for a couple of summers.
That's where he learned to dive, where he refueled boats as he stood on a sun-drenched deck and where he yearned to work in an air-conditioned room, she recalled. He and the other teens working there also played plenty of pranks on each other -- freezing each others' shoes or tossing them on the roof.
"Dan was a bright, shining star," Sandra Goldsby said. "His mind never stopped."
He went to school in Norfolk, she recalled, but "they couldn't keep him challenged." So he applied and was accepted into the math and science school.
Carl Frank, who teaches computer science there, was among his instructors. Frank said Fredinburg was "well-traveled" in this country, even as a teenager.
"Ultimately, his going to Everest was seeded in his background," Frank said. Fredinburg had already been interested in computer science as a youth, Frank added, citing a form he completed at the school as a student.
As an executive working in privacy for Google X, Fredinburg wanted to take the corporation's Google Maps into places it's never been -- like the pinnacle of Mount Everest.
Sites such as Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, had already been added, he wrote in 2013. So had the Everest base camp, he wrote on Google's official blog.
"While there's nothing quite like standing on the mountain, with Google Maps you can instantly transport yourself to the top of these peaks and enjoy the sights without all of the avalanches, rock slides, crevasses, and dangers from altitude and weather that mountaineers face," he wrote.
But Fredinburg's goals went further.
He co-founded Save the Ice, an organization aimed at combining "adventure and activism to raise awareness about climate change." Once he reached the top of Mount Everest, he hoped to plant there the organization's flag -- which says simply, "NEAT," a reference to keeping the earth clean, the organization's website says.
He had tried before. In March 2013, Fredinburg told Time magazine that he had survived a magnitude-6.9 earthquake while he was gathering data for Google at the Everest base camp.
Time quoted Fredinburg as saying: "As I was out in the dark, you could hear people screaming and running for cover. That is an eye-opening experience. ... These people accept their fate as predetermined. To see them panicking and fearing something, it tests your own ability to stay calm in situations like that and not panic as well."
In Arkansas, the School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts issued a statement Monday expressing sadness over Fredinburg's death.
"Dan was a model of the goals and aspirations we have for each graduate. ... As both an innovator and adventurer in his work with Google, Dan was focused on developing ideas and technologies with global impacts," the school said. "His passion and drive is an inspiration and leaves a lasting influence on our program."
Sandra Goldsby remembered Fredinburg being in the earlier avalanche. She said he wasn't injured in that one.
"He didn't make it to the top that time because officials closed the mountain" after the avalanche, she said.
"Dan was always being creative," she said. "He had a great heart."
She noted that he had supported an orphanage in Nepal. Save the Ice provided a link to a relief fund, from which money would go to that orphanage and to other children after the quake. That fund's website said his Mount Everest attempt also was on behalf of two orphanages in Nepal.
"He was one of the really bright guys," Goldsby said Monday. "He didn't color inside the lines. He was just Dan."
State Desk on 04/28/2015