Ryan,

thank you so much.  This solution works beautifully!

In .NET 2.0, this can be done declaratively using the AppendDataBoundItems property. This will append all data-bound ListItems to the DropDownList, leaving those you add manually as the first selections.

<asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownListID" AppendDataBoundItems="true" runat="server">
     <asp:ListItem Text="Default text" Value="Default value" />
</asp:DropDownList>