This news came as an incredible shock to us! I was just reading his posts on the VMP site on Friday!

I got to know Drew, Brent and Irene at Whilfest and our local user group. I remember him attending sessions and asking questions that I was too shy to ask. Every minute I spent with Drew I was learning something. I was impressed when an attendee, or someone at the user group, or even I would suggest something and he would take that idea and put it to use and tell you what a great idea it was. That made all of us feel good.

Last year we took on the undaunting task of putting on a Visual FoxPro conference. We made sure to give him plenty of credit, but he deserved more. He mentored us all the way. He suggested having it somewhere other than a costly hotel, he helped us with choosing topics and gave us advice on every aspect of the conference from his vast experience as a presenter.

The highlight of the conference for me was his keynote address. It was a once in a life time performance. Drew was delivering his address and one of the attendees was asking a lot of questions. The guy's phone rang and he left the room. When he returned he asked a question about what Drew covered when he was out of the room. Drew asked him if he wanted to give the keynote and the guy went up on stage and took the mike from Drew! He then proceeded to tell jokes! I wasn't paying attention to how it was received by the attendees because I was laughing so hard. You can only imagine how much fun we had planning it with Drew! He did the whole thing and we didn't even know what they were going to do.

Since then I have been working with VMP and converting my applications to the framework. The first thing you will notice about VMP is the vast body of documentation and Drew's zreadme that walks you through doing anything in the framework. It seems that every couple of weeks something would be added that I would put to use right away in my existing applications. I asked Drew several times how he got everything done. He would smile and say "I don't know, I just do it".

I've been self-employed for fifteen years and anyone in the same position will tell you that you need to draw inspiration from someone. Drew provided that inspiration for me. The way he encouraged people, the way he listened to people and learned from them, the way he never stopped learning, and his absolutely incredible energy. Did you ever stop to think what it would be like for you to do your job about 15 - 16 hours a day and learn new versions of software well enough to put them in your applications and go travel around the world teaching others at conferences. Then he goes and plays hockey a couple of times a week.

Drew was a great man and Brent was a brillint kid. I feel fortunate that I got to know them as well as I did!

Jeff