This is such horrible news. I also hoped against hope that the news was wrong.

Drew was one of the great geniuses in the FP world.

He was also very generous, very funny, and very personable. He spoke to the NYC user group a few times while I was leading it. On one of those occasions, I walked him back to his hotel after the dinner and we had a quiet and personal talk about non-technical issues including religion and his then-nomadic way of life. What a privilege it was to spend those moments with him.

He lived his professional life developing new ways to be "speedy" and he taught his techniques to everyone. All of us in the VFP community have benefited from his innovations and observations.

He was one of the funniest people I've ever seen. At one DevCon, he was proceeding in his usual speedy way when he noticed a sign language interpreter signing to her client. He immediately sped up his delivery from incredibly fast to impossibly fast, all the while keeping an eye on the signer. After about 10 seconds, she gave up, visibly flustered. It could have been a mean spirited joke but Drew turned it into a funny and friendly situation, I don't remember exactly how he did it, but he made some comments to the signer, who smiled, the crowd laughed, and everone proceded at Drew's normal pace. It was a classic Drew Speedy moment.

Drew was always available to people with questions, despite his busy schedule, and was a warm and friendly person despite a sense of humor that some people felt approached the edge of propriety. A great technical innovator, he developed techniques that his various companies and many of us in the VFP developer community used to take VFP to new places at incredible speed. He created many of the techniques that I used in my framework which I developed in the days of the VFP 5.0 beta and which remain in the framework today.

This is such horrible news. My condolences to his wife...