DevBlog

The FoxPro community was shocked over the weekend to hear about the tragic death of well known Fox guru Drew Speedie and his son Brent (details here). As Drew, his wife Irene, and Brent were at just about every Fox conference, they were all well known and loved.

I got the news yesterday afternoon. I was at LAX waiting for my flight home from the PDC. Bill Anderson called me and said, "I hope you're sitting down". Good thing I was. Evan Pauly later called with the same news.

I remember first meeting Drew in 1994. I was pretty much an unknown then. I had been hanging out on the FoxForum on Compuserv and knew some people from there. I lived in Kalispell, Montana and Drew and his family were passing through. I arranged for him to speak at my Fox User Group (membership 3). Drew gave one of his famous Tips and Tricks presentations. I remember that I actually taught him something, to my great surprise.

Years later, I had become and MVP and was giving my first conference presentation at Great Lakes in Milwaukee. It was a precon session on COM+. Things were going fine for the first 15-30 minutes. Then Drew walked in. I thought, "Uh oh. Here's one of the big guns." It made me nervous to have him there at the back of the room. He was there about an hour and asked a few questions, then left. Afterwards I asked him for an honest critique. He gave me some pointers and told me where things were done right.

Drew was always a gentleman. His presentations were some of the best. Well prepared, presented, always dead on technically....and practically. His articles in FoxPro Advisor the same way.

Brent was nothing short of a genius. It was not uncommon to see him sitting next to Drew, debugging his dad's code...and even helping out in afterhours sessions.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Irene and the entire Speedie family. Drew, you will be missed, but not forgotten.