Dave Nona: Dedicated to a Life of Service
By Cal Abbo
Dave Nona’s life began in Baghdad, Iraq, where he was the oldest child in a large family, having six brothers and two sisters. His father, a banker, moved the family to Amarah, in southeastern Iraq, when Dave was five.
“Like most [Iraqi] cities, Amarah was predominantly Muslim,” Dave said. “There were maybe 10 or 15 Christian families, but we did have a Chaldean church and a priest there.” Dave remembers being the only Christian in his primary school.
At the end of primary school, the equivalent of sixth grade in the United States, all Iraqis take the baccalaureate exam to see where their academic trajectory could lead. In 1959, when Dave took the exam, he received the highest marks in his city; Amarah’s population was between 50,000 and 100,000 people at the time.
“The king had been overthrown and there was a new government,” Dave recalls. “Abd al-Karim Qasim was the new prime minister. I remember receiving a medallion from him for highest performance in the city.”
During these early years, most of Dave’s friends were Muslim, as Chaldean families were hard to find in the relatively small city. He still keeps in touch with one of his closest friends; along with their partners, they took a couples’ trip up north earlier this year.
“There were maybe ten Chaldean families in the city,” he said. “There was a dentist, a doctor, and a few who owned liquor stores.”
Baghdad College
Dave’s formative years were spent with the Jesuits at Baghdad College, a prestigious, private high school in Iraq that offered an excellent education led by Jesuits from the United States. It was during these years that he made many important connections and learned the Catholic values that have guided his life ever since.
“I had a great education,” Dave said. “Not only a secular education in the arts and sciences, but education in values and ethics, philosophy, and theology. And I witnessed the example of the Jesuits’ dedication.”
“About half the students were Muslim,” he said. “The Jesuits never used the schools to evangelize. They were very careful about that. They led by example.”
Seeing a group of Jesuits come from their comfortable life in the United States to a place of political turmoil and unrest in Iraq to teach underserved students inspired Dave. He carries that inspiration with him to this day and talks fondly of how blessed he is to have had those mentors in his life.
“God has given me a bit of talent and lots of blessings, and I feel a strong sense of responsibility,” Dave said. “To whom a lot has been given, a lot is expected.”
According to Dave, the Christian tradition places heavy emphasis on what he calls “the common good.” The Jesuits taught him lessons about the common good and expanded his view of what his life should be about. It’s this view that drives him to self-sacrifice and work for his community.
The United States
Dave came to the U.S. on a scholarship offer from the University of Rhode Island. He finished a bachelor’s degree at the Jesuit Al-Hikma University in Baghdad before accepting the offer to come to America. At the University of Rhode Island, he earned a master’s degree in civil engineering, specializing in soils and foundations. After he finished school in 1970, he moved to Detroit, where he had several aunts and an uncle.
His family immigrated to Detroit in 1973. After initially working in a bakery for a while, Dave was able to find an engineering job with a consulting firm that required a lot of travel. After the arrival of his family, he moved to another engineering firm that did not require travel. For decades, Dave served as a consultant and eventually made partner at the first firm he started with. In the meantime, he got involved in community organizations to further the interests of Chaldeans in Detroit.
Notably, Dave served on the parish council at Mother of God Church in Southfield. He joined some community organizations, including the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan (CIAAM). Dave described the club as mostly social, but many of the members were interested in developing the culture and position of Chaldeans in Detroit.
“We were young and ambitious at the time, and a group of us were elected to the board of directors of CIAAM,” Dave said. “The Association was very small, and they didn’t have too much money. They didn’t have many activities because they didn’t have a place to stay in.”
What the Association did have, though, was a property next to Mother of God Church. “They were two or three years late in paying taxes and the property was about to be foreclosed,” Dave recalls.
Instead of letting it be lost, he and other board members came up with an idea to raise money. Detroit had recently begun putting on ethnic festivals downtown, including the Arab World Festival. “We formed a Chaldean dance group with Chaldean attire and music. We had our families prepare some food and sold it at the festival,” Dave said.
Over the next few years, CIAAM raised enough money to pay the outstanding property taxes and salvage the property, which would later become the famed Southfield Manor. “I’d like to think that the history of Southfield Manor and Shenandoah would have been different if the Association had lost that property,” he said.
Just after Dave left Iraq, in the late ‘60s, Baghdad College was taken over by the government and the Jesuits were forced to leave the country and head back to the United States. The bond, however, would not be broken. Beginning in 1977, the former students and Jesuit teachers at Baghdad College have arranged reunions across the United States; in Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Diego, and more. One of the objectives of the reunions was to raise funds for the retirement of the Jesuits.
Dave’s Jesuit mentors from the old country connected him with Manresa, a popular retreat house located in Bloomfield Hills. “I’ve been going there for a long time, since the mid ‘70s, on annual retreats,” Dave said. He also helps them with some fundraising and construction projects.
Dave is largely responsible for a large endowment secured by the Chaldean Church in Detroit. “In the ‘90s, there was an embargo on Iraq due to the gulf war. Fr. Jibrail Kassab, who was a priest and then the Bishop of Basra, Iraq, would make frequent visits here,” he said. Dave made sure to offer a small donation each time he saw him because of the hardship in Iraq due to the embargo.
“On one of his visits, Bishop Kassab indicated that the Chaldean Patriarch needed some funds for the education of seminarians in Iraq. We started a committee and began fundraising to establish an endowment for the education of seminarians,” Dave said. “Within few years, we raised over a million dollars.”
By the time the money was raised, however, the Patriarch no longer needed it; another charitable organization had stepped in to take care of them. Dave and his committee noticed the local church was beginning to see several young men seeking vocations to the priesthood. With the blessing of Bishop Ibrahim, they moved the donations to the Chaldean Church in Michigan. Since then, the endowment has grown to over two million dollars and has aided in the education of numerous seminarians.
During the mid-1990’s, the late Fr. Hanna Cheikho was given the responsibility to establish a new Chaldean Parish, St. Thomas, in West Bloomfield, Michigan. “I was asked to help Fr. Hanna with several aspects relating to the formation and construction of the new church,” Dave said, “and in particular, in starting and sustaining a substantial fundraising campaign that helped to complete the construction of the church building in a timely manner.”
In 1988, Dave was fortunate to marry a wonderful woman, Kholoud Abdulahad, who was also a civil engineer. They have three fine children who are very accomplished in the medical field; Paul is a cardiologist, Monica is a physician assistant, and Matthew is a dentist.
The Chamber of Commerce and Chaldean Community Foundation
“In the late ‘90s, Sabah Hermiz Summa, a close friend of mine, approached me about starting a new organization. He envisioned a Chamber of Commerce which was meant to serve the business interests of the community,” Dave said. “In the beginning I resisted, but Sabah was persistent. After two years I agreed to work with him.”
Dave set three conditions if he was going to be involved in starting the Chamber: first, we needed to raise enough money to operate for at least a full year, which they estimated at $100,000; second, they needed to find a good, paid Executive Director; and third, we needed to have a strong, unpaid Board of Directors to oversee the entire operation.
“We raised enough money and found a young man by the name of Martin Manna who agreed to be the Executive Director. We formed a Board, and the idea clicked. In my mind, the Chamber and what came out of it, which includes the Foundation, is probably the most successful service organization in the history of the community -- not only here, but in Iraq too,” Dave said.
Dave praised the Chaldean Community Foundation for the work it does helping refugees and immigrants as well as strengthening the interests and connections of the already-established Chaldean community. “It was timely when the Foundation started because we were getting many refugees from Iraq as a result of the American occupation,” he said. “The growth and scope of services and the type of people the Foundation has, is quite frankly beyond any expectations I ever had.”
Dave prides himself on being heavily involved in the Chaldean Community Foundation. He and his family started a scholarship fund in the name of their late sister, Yvonne Nona, who died of cancer about 12 years ago. “She had an interest and a passion for helping Chaldean girls go to school and get educated,” he said.
Dave also serves on the committee for the Foundation’s Sterling Heights Van Dyke Affordable Housing project, which began construction this fall.
The Common Good
Dave’s life has been enriched by the values he espouses and tries to act upon. His incessant focus on the common good and helping others has led him down a path of service that he wishes others would follow.
“The Chaldean community has acquired a lot of the materialistic aspects of American society,” Dave noted. “Many of the negative aspects include excessive individualism, hyper materialism, only caring about oneself, and not caring enough about the common good.”
While many in the community are professed Christians, Dave said the community can do more to actualize its Christian faith and put it into action. “In particular, I think we should take more seriously what Pope Francis advocates for; to address social justice issues and concerns of humanity according to Christian tradition and faith,” he said.
“Working to combat poverty and discrimination, providing education to the poor… Caring about issues related to the environment and treating people with equality and justice. These are all important aspects of the Christian tradition that we claim we belong to.” Dave mentioned he sees a lot of hope and growth in younger Chaldeans for adopting these values and concerns because of the Catholic education many are getting.
His dream, however, is to help establish a small Jesuit school in northern Iraq for refugees and the underserved. “I know this may sound too ambitious, maybe even a little crazy, but the community here has been blessed beyond any expectations we had 50 years ago,” he said. “It’s not only good for the people who are being helped, but I think it’s also good for the people who are helping.”
Chaldean Pioneers is a new series that profiles extraordinary Chaldeans and details the impact they’ve had on our community.
