Youmans recalls his childhood as a quieter time in Beaufort. He remembers occasionally having to stay after school as an elementary student and missing the bus; he would walk back home to Burton, where the family lived until moving downtown after his father died when David was 14. His name came up in the draft in 1967 and he did a tour in Vietnam, working behind the scenes with a unit providing administrative and direct support logistics, devising strategies to improve tactics and ensure teams in the field had the supplies they needed.

“It was really not too bad,” Youmans recalls. “A lot of guys over there had it worse than I did.” Youmans took plenty of lessons from his time in Vietnam, not the least of which was how to work within a team. When he returned home to Beaufort, Youmans went to work as a surveyor for Doug Trogdon, but after a couple of years he left for a position at the Blue Channel crab processing plant in Port Royal. He worked in the plant office for about a year, then took over the data processing office, complete with an IBM System 3 computer “about the size of a compact car now that wouldn’t do any more than a laptop would do now.”

That career didn’t stick, and neither did his next job building docks and bulkheads, so he went back to surveying for Trogdon in 1973 and has been in that line of work ever since. “I like the outdoors and like nature and hiking, and I’m pretty good at math, so surveying was pretty much a natural fit,” Youmans says. He earned his license in 1983 and in 1990 opened Beaufort Surveying with a partner, whom he bought out a few years later. His company has survived for nearly 30 years, but in his trademark manner, Youmans is quick to deflect the credit.

“Luck,” he says when asked about the reasons for his success. “Lots of luck. I don’t consider myself a very good business man. I think I’m a right fair surveyor but as far as business goes, I lack a lot.” Business was tough for a decade or so during the economic slowdown, but it has picked up the past couple of years. One thing that has never changed is Youmans’ love for Beaufort, where he’s a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club of Beaufort.

He and his wife of 50 years, Cate, built a home on Warsaw Island about 20 years ago. It’s quiet and peaceful with a spot out back where he can shoot and a citrus grove to tend to. His kids are all grown now — his youngest son, Michael, lives in Beaufort with his two children and works for the surveying company, but his oldest son and daughter live in Florida. David frequently visits his kids and grandkids in the Sunshine State, but it’s no substitute for beautiful Beaufort by the sea.

“I’ve been here, there and yonder visiting, but I’ve never found any place I’d like to stay more than just a little bit,” he says. “The smell … When you get back into town and you get to the Whale Branch bridge or the Broad River bridge, you’ve got to roll down the window and take a deep breath. No place like it.”