Fwd: Dick Banks: EASI loses a valued friend and great colleague

Dear WAI IG Participants:

For those of you who are familiar with the great work that Dick Banks 
and Norm Coombs have done as co-leaders of Equal Access to Software 
and Information (EASI), including education and training around Web 
accessibility, I thought you might want to know the sad news of 
Dick's passing yesterday.

I've included a forward of Norm's message, below.

With sad regards,

- Judy

>Date:         Wed, 9 Jul 2008 07:48:34 -0700
>Reply-To: Equal Access to Software & Information <EASI@LISTSERV.ICORS.ORG>
>Sender: Equal Access to Software & Information <EASI@LISTSERV.ICORS.ORG>
>From: Prof Norm Coombs <norm.coombs@GMAIL.COM>
>Subject: Dick Banks: EASI loses a valued friend and great colleague
>To: EASI@LISTSERV.ICORS.ORG
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>Hello EASI friends and colleagues:
>
>Please forgive the duplicate postings, but I know you all will want 
>to know that Dick died yesterday.  This leaves a giant hole in the 
>life of EASI and in my life as well.  Dick is my best friend.
>
>Dick was diagnosed with cancer in early April, if I recall.  Even 
>since then he had many good days when he was back on the 
>Internet.  These were among his happiest days the last 3 months as 
>working and helping others were the things that filled his life with joy.
>
>Dick could learn new software like no one I know.  He loved to take 
>its technical confusions and often opaque manuals and make those 
>technology items easy for people to understand.  He also had a 
>contagious optimism and sense of humor.  He was a man of integrity 
>and never was satisfied to do a mediocre job.
>
>God has blessed me to have Dick as a best friend and working buddy.
>
>I ask you all to remember his family at this time.
>
>You can read about Dick's bout with Cancer at the Care Page from the 
>Mayo Clinic at:
>http://www.carepages.com/mayoclinic
>You will need to register.  After which search for his page.  The 
>name of the page is DicksJourney and note that is one word with no 
>punctuation and does have a capital D and a capital J
>
>If you want to contact Dick's wife, Carol, the address is:
>310 Micheels Ln APT 1
>Menomonie, WI 54751
>
>You can also leave a message on the Care Page message Board.
>
>Norm Coombs
>norm.coombs@gmail.com
>I want to thank you all for your support of Dick's and my work.

--
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/CSAIL Building 32-G526
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Wednesday, 9 July 2008 20:29:56 UTC