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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