• RETROSPECTIVE: Obituary: William D. Pfeiffer, r.r.b. Moderator

    From Paul W. Schleck@21:1/5 to All on Sat Oct 16 14:27:56 2021
    From: TELECOM Digest Editor
    Subject: Obituary: William D. Pfeiffer, r.r.b. Moderator
    Date: Sep 4, 1999
    Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom

    With much sadness I report the passing of Bill Pfeiffer, who had
    served as moderator of rec.radio.broacasting for a number of years.
    Bill also maintained the http://www.airwaves.com web site. He
    was killed in an automobile crash on Wednesday, September 1. I
    do not have specifics regarding the incident, nor where the fault
    would lie, as of this time. He was 43 years of age. He is survived
    by his fiance Cindy. His home was in Milwaukee, WI at the time of
    his passing.

    I first met Bill in the fall of 1977 when he applied for employment
    with a company I was working for in Chicago. At the time, he lived
    with his aging mother on the northwest side of Chicago. Over the
    next ten or twelve years we went our separate ways regards employment
    and other interests but visited each other on a frequent basis. I
    introduced him to personal computers around 1983 or so, and about
    1985 or 1986 he became interested enough that I provided him with
    some 'old' (even way back then!) equipment of mine I no longer wanted
    in my own work. I taught him the basics, and introduced him to Usenet
    around 1987.

    About 1991, he wanted to begin his own contribution to the net with
    his rather extensive knowledge of broadcast radio operations, and
    I encouraged him to 'go for it' by starting the Usenet group known
    as rec.radio.broadcasting. After some discussion on the topic in
    a couple other Usenet groups with similar interests he did decide to
    try his hand at being a Usenet moderator. I think, but cannot recall
    for certain, that his first arrangements for doing this were through
    a system administrator at uiuc.edu who provided him with an account
    and getting it started. I also provided Bill with some of my scripts
    used in this Digest. I do know that many were the nights we spent
    long hours discussing 'the future of the net' and where it was all
    going to go over the next decade or more.

    Sometime around 1993 Bill decided it best to leave the Chicago area
    for good; a decision I would not reach for a few more years. With
    his mother, for whom he was now essentially responsible for her full
    time care, he relocated to Springfield, Missouri where he lived for
    about three years. While he was in Springfield, a disasterous fire
    in his home took every single possession he owned, except for the
    clothes he hastily put on in the middle of the night as he escaped
    to safety. He evacuated his mother, who had to be taken to a local
    hospital because of smoke inhalation. By 'every possession', I mean
    he possessed the clothes he was wearing when the fire was put out
    early that morning. His mother never did recover from it, she passed
    away a few weeks later while in the hospital. She was simply too
    old and feeble to get out of the fire on her own, and was unconcious
    when Bill pulled her out of it.

    Bill called me on the phone the day of the fire and told me that he
    was at that point, frankly, very scared. I put out an emergency
    appeal for him on the net, and in the r.r.b. newsgroup in particular,
    and with the help of generous netizens he was able to resume his
    newsgroup a few days later, albiet in a crippled way for awhile.
    After his mother passed during her hospital stay as a result of the
    fire, Bill remained in the Springfield area for a bit longer then
    decided to relocate with his dog 'Jake' to Milwaukee. On the way from
    Missouri to Wisconsin, he stopped in Skokie to visit with me for
    a couple days. That would have been in the spring of 1997. He told
    me he was going to go spend some time 'with a lady he knew in
    Milwaukee', and I am assuming now that is the person who became his
    fiance.

    That was the last time I saw him in person. We had argued the day
    before about some inconsequential things involving the internet, and
    it was clear to both of us that we were going in different directions
    with our beliefs and ideas. At the time of the dispute in 1993 regards
    the moderation of comp.dcom.telecom Bill had said to me, 'whatever
    you do with c.d.t. as a result of this dispute, that's the way things
    are going to be on the net for *many* years to come ...' And in our
    final personal meeting that day in 1997, he just had to remind me
    of that, saying 'I told you four years ago about the best way to
    handle c.d.t.', and I frankly got more than a little annoyed by his
    comments. Although our final meeting was cordial, we both knew we
    would likely never meet again in person. And while we both agreed
    that a twenty-year friendship should not be killed over something
    like differences in operational philosophy regards the best way to
    maintain a newsgroup and a website, we both realized that things were
    not the way they had been before.

    It was no longer 1977 when I put in a good word with the boss of our
    company to hire a 21 year old 'hippie kid' with long hair and a guitar
    who showed up at the door looking for work; why, it wasn't even 1985
    any longer when I taught him BASIC and for his 'graduation gift' from
    my 'computer school' I gave him the OSI C-1-P computer with all of
    8 K memory that Dan Kritchevsky had given me when I graduated from his 'computer school' six or seven years before that. Even 1991-92 and
    the great days of the net just prior to the web were long since gone.
    So we shook hands, hugged, and wished each other the best. I saw or
    heard no more from him (other than occassionally reading his newsgroup)
    until about a month ago, when I sent him a piece of email saying we
    needed to chat and catch up on things sometime soon. He wrote back,
    and we chatted in email for a couple of letters, then it dropped off
    and that was it. In the last email we exchanged, sometime in late-July
    I asked him, 'where would things be now if Sam (the fellow I worked
    for who hired Bill also) had not hired you, or we had not had that
    very early friendship ...' but he did not respond back.

    My sympathy is extended to his fiance, Cindy; but it is also extended
    to the many netizens who participated in his forums and at his web
    site who have lost a treasured friend and resource.


    Patrick Townson

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