Oh, how I hate having to write obits for people I knew, especially someone as nice as Dana Gabbard. If you have an interest in old Disney comics or any funny animal comics or animation, you owe a special nod to Dana. He did a lot to uncover the names of folks who wrote and drew that kind of material. He published a great fanzine, The Duckburg Times, which I'm sure cost him a lot of time and money but he was proud of it as well he should have been.
Dana was around sixty, give or take a year or two, and he worked a lot in the rapid transit business and for a time, for DirecTV. He'd been sick for quite a while and we don't yet know the cause of death other than it occurred when he was being transported to a hospital emergency room via ambulance due to respiratory distress. His health problems had reportedly prevented him from getting vaccinated against you-know-what but we don't know if that awful disease was a factor.
I met Dana at some San Diego Con or other a long time ago when he approached me for help in identifying unknown artists who drew Disney Comics for Western Publishing…for Dell or Gold Key publications. There was no money for him in this; just the satisfaction of doing something he felt should be done. Thereafter, I saw him at every comic convention in Southern California that he was physically able to attend. A lot of the photos I have of the audiences for panels at Comic-Con are like "Where's Waldo?" If you look hard enough, you can almost always find Dana somewhere in them.
We're talking here about a really great guy with a great sense of humor and a true love of funny comic books and the folks who made them. We need more people like Dana Gabbard, not less.