Pickles, Piggles, Bill.... A Great Man.

I'm going to make this post, as Celebration of the Man I knew. One of the few people in my life, with that designation, that I can say was a positive influence on my life.

First the sad part...

He had a major stroke about 2 weeks ago, and has been unconscious and unresponsive for the last week. The doctors have decided that there is no chance of his body making any recovery, he also has a high fever that they can't get to go down.

Bill was a great Man. He wasn't a politician, he wasn't a super hero, but his present affected many in this community.

I first met him on Crystals chat. He was a bit gruff, but once you got to know him, you knew he cared. That was the story of his life honestly...

Big man, long beard. When he wore his Hawaiian shirts in the summer he looked like the Hallmark cards of Santa on Vacation!

But he was gruff to people that didn't know him, and a teddy bear to those that did.

He guarded his private life, and you had to earn his trust to meet the real him, but once you did, he would have given you the shirt off his own back, even if you already had a coat, and both of you were stuck in a snow storm.

When we met, I had just moved back in with my family, after years of estrangement and I needed to get out of there again. I was in the middle of building a couple websites (StoryPortal and HuggleBugs) and Bill cornered me on ICQ one day (yeah, it was THAT long ago) and said "Hey, you are pretty good at that. Why aren't you doing it for money?".

I explained to him, that I needed to have servers, and that the money at the time was in Hosting websites for others.... I mentioned that I didn't have all the knowledge I needed to do it on my own, but I was thirsty for knowledge and trying to learn...

So he started asking me questions about how much money would be needed, and I gave him some figures... I was ball parking things, just talking. I thought it would be a COOL fantasy to have my own web host... So I kept talking...

I had met Kim (KimEM) a few months prior to this, and told her what was going on... She asked if she could be involved and I said "Sure!" thinking it would be awesome....

And then, 2 weeks later, I got a packet of information in the mail, that I needed to sign and send back.... It was our articles of incorporation, for this "company" we had talked about forming... "PP&F NetWorks, LLC" (Plummer, Pomerantz, and Fox).

2 days after that, there was a laptop on my doorstep, along with 2 checks for me to order the servers I needed...

10 days after that, once I had picked up and shipped the servers to Chicago, I had a train ticket to Chicago, to move in with Kim.

When Kim's job let her go, and we had no where to turn, Bill invited us into his home... And then moved us into one of his rentals...

When Kim passed away and I couldn't keep this home by myself, he told me not to worry, and let me stay here anyways...

When his wife filed for divorce, at the first sign of his getting sick, he moved in with me, and I started to care for him...

And as things progressively got worse, I was blessed with the chance to try and return everything he had done for me.

I don't know if I did well, but I did my damndest and I will love him forever just as I did Kim.

If Kim was my Mommy, then Bill was like a daddy. We didn't always get along, and I REALLY didn't care for his political opinions, but I will stand by my original statement.