We are shocked by this tragic news. Gary and I both send our deepest sympathies to Irene and all of Drew's family and friends.

I remember when I first encountered Drew. It was at the '99 DevCon in Palm Springs (my first). I was standing in line with Nancy Folsom, waiting for our turn on the Polo field. There was some guy directly behind us in line, just cutting up with all kinds of funny jokes. He wasn't really talking to us, so I tried not to pay attention to him, but he was soooo funny that I finally turned around to look and came face-to-face with Drew.

Gary remembers finally meeting Drew at that same conference, although they knew each other from CompuServe. (Gary and I hadn't met yet, although we did 2 months later at the SoCal conference). Gary remembers how Drew came up to him and said how much he had learned from Gary's columns in FoxTalk. Gary was flabbergasted ... since he was about to say the same thing to Drew about his columns in Advisor.

I was hoping to see Drew next week in Redmond.

This is a terrible tragedy and Drew and Brent will be sorely missed, but certainly not forgotten.

~~Bonnie



>On Friday, September 16, 2005, Drew Speedie and his son, Brent, fell a few hundred feet to their deaths from a bridge in Yellowstone Park. The Speedie family was on vacation there. Details of this tragedy are extremely limited at this time.
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>Drew was a friend and a valued member of the Visionpace team. He was the architect and primary developer of the Visual Maxframe Professional VFP framework and a frequent speaker at Fox conferences in North America and Europe and was often accompanied by Brent and his wife, Irene.
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>Questions or concerns should be directed to Russ Swall (rswall@visionpace.com) or by phone, 816-350-7900 or 888-904-7900.