Post by JR on Apr 5, 2015 11:08:38 GMT -6
To say the least this has been an eventful week and a very sad one at that especially for me. My relationship with Rich went all the way back to the founding days of this forum. I will never forget the first time he called me and that's the day Scooter Doc was formed. We both didn't know squat at the time about building a forum in fact were not very good at computers at all at the time. He agreed to start figuring out how to use the hosting service that we still use and I agreed to help with all the tech stuff that I could and he also asked if I thought a good name for it would be Scooter Doc patterned after the career he chose in life and I agreed thus Scooter Doc was born. It started slowly but soon with the other big forum at the time starting to fall apart Scooter Doc became the place to come for a lot of reasons. Then for a lot of bad reasons on both our parts Rich and I separated ways. It was for a long spell a bad time for him and I, the few who knew about our conflict can truly say we didn't care for each other. But one day for several reasons I said enough and approached Rich wanting to end the grief and unpleasantness. People can say that it takes a big person to say your sorry and sometimes this is true but in this case I can say it took a bigger person to forgive someone for their transgressions and this is the case with Rich he had a big heart and forgave me while all the time trying to shoulder the blame for our separation. This was the kind of person he really was.
After we laid our bad times to rest we became the best of friends and when I say this I mean best. There was never a week went by that we didn't talk, never. With his work at part time we talked every single Tuesday and Thursday and every weekend except this past weekend before his death. We didn't talk that weekend because he had told me that him and his lovely wife Sue were planning if the weather was good to take a ride to try out her new scooter plus he knew that we were playing in a softball tournament as my granddaughter is a pitcher on a traveling softball team. Rich though when he knew we were playing would drop me a text asking how we were doing, he got into softball after learning about it from my granddaughter playing.
For us to talk this much was also a tribute to him, why? Rich wasn't a phone person, when I say this he didn't like the phone because of having to at times be on the phone at work so much but we worked out a very good system that let us have a great time visiting, he learned to text which I don't care for either and we had a rule, if one of us calls or texted and didn't receive a immediate response or answer it was all A-Ok there was a good reason that either of us didn't answer. I even thought that was they case Tuesday morning after this past weekend, didn't call him on Monday because he worked at the clinic on Monday so as usual after taking the grandkids to school on Tuesday I called to see what he was up to and even when his stepdaughter Mandy answered the phone and talked to me about his condition I gave thought to "he's pulling a early ultimate April Fools joke on me", man he could pull a good one on you! Sadly this was not the case.
We talked for no reason, we talked when either of us needed help on something, we talked about our lives, we were friends. Sometimes we talked to 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning, we shared a lot of good conversations to the end. This summer my family along with several members of my wife's family are going to the coast for 5 days on vacation to Gulf Shores Alabama and Rich and I made plans to meet face to face and I'm deeply saddened this is not going to happen.
This is the first weekend I won't get to talk to him, this past Tuesday and Thursday were hard for me, I still have his phone number in my phone address book, haven't brought myself to delete it yet. I miss him very much, his voice, laugh, his politeness.
I have been asked by a few about the future of Scooter Doc, what happens now that he is gone. Rich always honored me by calling me a co-founder but in Proboard's system of order there is only one admin and even though the admin can grant another every single power they have there are a few that is reserved for only the person who signed up the forum with Proboards. Rich gave me every power that could be granted and in Proboards system there is a way to let them know your wishes in the event of your passing or what is called a continuation plan. Rich made such a plan as I have with other forums. The admin powers have been passed on to me according to his wishes and I am truly honored he thought that much of me.
There will be no changes of postings by him, his account will be locked and forever remain the same in his honor, I will see to it as long as I remain on this earth the forum continue in his honor, it meant the world to him and he made many friends here. In closing here I have a tech video of him explaining the vacuum hose layout on a scooter. I converted it to my godaddy server so in the event his You Tube account is closed I will still have it. He had a clear pleasant voice one that I miss very much. I teased him about his pointer in the video, told him he needed a bigger screwdriver! He answered "yea right you crazy Arkie!"
Here's another one of Rich's cool videos.
After we laid our bad times to rest we became the best of friends and when I say this I mean best. There was never a week went by that we didn't talk, never. With his work at part time we talked every single Tuesday and Thursday and every weekend except this past weekend before his death. We didn't talk that weekend because he had told me that him and his lovely wife Sue were planning if the weather was good to take a ride to try out her new scooter plus he knew that we were playing in a softball tournament as my granddaughter is a pitcher on a traveling softball team. Rich though when he knew we were playing would drop me a text asking how we were doing, he got into softball after learning about it from my granddaughter playing.
For us to talk this much was also a tribute to him, why? Rich wasn't a phone person, when I say this he didn't like the phone because of having to at times be on the phone at work so much but we worked out a very good system that let us have a great time visiting, he learned to text which I don't care for either and we had a rule, if one of us calls or texted and didn't receive a immediate response or answer it was all A-Ok there was a good reason that either of us didn't answer. I even thought that was they case Tuesday morning after this past weekend, didn't call him on Monday because he worked at the clinic on Monday so as usual after taking the grandkids to school on Tuesday I called to see what he was up to and even when his stepdaughter Mandy answered the phone and talked to me about his condition I gave thought to "he's pulling a early ultimate April Fools joke on me", man he could pull a good one on you! Sadly this was not the case.
We talked for no reason, we talked when either of us needed help on something, we talked about our lives, we were friends. Sometimes we talked to 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning, we shared a lot of good conversations to the end. This summer my family along with several members of my wife's family are going to the coast for 5 days on vacation to Gulf Shores Alabama and Rich and I made plans to meet face to face and I'm deeply saddened this is not going to happen.
This is the first weekend I won't get to talk to him, this past Tuesday and Thursday were hard for me, I still have his phone number in my phone address book, haven't brought myself to delete it yet. I miss him very much, his voice, laugh, his politeness.
I have been asked by a few about the future of Scooter Doc, what happens now that he is gone. Rich always honored me by calling me a co-founder but in Proboard's system of order there is only one admin and even though the admin can grant another every single power they have there are a few that is reserved for only the person who signed up the forum with Proboards. Rich gave me every power that could be granted and in Proboards system there is a way to let them know your wishes in the event of your passing or what is called a continuation plan. Rich made such a plan as I have with other forums. The admin powers have been passed on to me according to his wishes and I am truly honored he thought that much of me.
There will be no changes of postings by him, his account will be locked and forever remain the same in his honor, I will see to it as long as I remain on this earth the forum continue in his honor, it meant the world to him and he made many friends here. In closing here I have a tech video of him explaining the vacuum hose layout on a scooter. I converted it to my godaddy server so in the event his You Tube account is closed I will still have it. He had a clear pleasant voice one that I miss very much. I teased him about his pointer in the video, told him he needed a bigger screwdriver! He answered "yea right you crazy Arkie!"
Here's another one of Rich's cool videos.
