I, too, am only aware of dear Wally and Doc Watson. My housemates, fortunately, know very well that they’d have to post here should the worst happen to me. They don’t post here, but they know everything that goes on because I talk about it so much.
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Doc Watson is a guitar player, in the flatpicking style. His son Merle, who is dead was also a flatpicker, but did play the banjo also.
[/nitpick]
I stand corrected. Mr. S would have known that – he’s the Doc Watson fan, and how I even ever heard of the guy! I made the mistake of buying Mr. S a new banjo a few weeks ago, so I’ve got banjo on the brain. Thanks, Spritle.
If I recall correctly, there were two posters with similar usernames: one was Doc Watson and the other may have been Dr Watson. Neither was a very frequent poster on this board.
Doc Watson was an architect from Connecticut and a frequent poster on the F3 board. I met him when he was visiting Rochester last year. A few months later, he died in a car accident while on vacation in Africa.
When the news of his death was posted (by me among others) there was some confusion between him and the other poster. I believe there were some people who said that the other poster, Dr Watson, was also dead. I don’t know if this was confusion over two rarely seen posters with similar usernames or if, in fact, two different posters with similar usernames had both died.
But if I did happen to expire in some heroic fashion, I’m not sure how you guys would ever find out about it… unless my co-worker, MrO, happened to mention it… or Astrogirl thought to come in here, register, and post about it (she knows how much time I spend here, so it might occur to her to do so… but probably not…). Hmm… I might mention this to MrO and Astrogirl…
Well, my sister already has strict instructions to inform this board and my mailing list upon my demise. That got discussed after Wally accident. And I’ll be informing her MUD if anything happens to her.
Well, I’m working on it, but the dogs seem to be perfectly healthy. Can’t really go anywhere while they’re still around. However, when it becomes feasible, I will be sure to post an annoucement first.
‘Doc Watson’ was the colloquial reference for the poster whose username at Fathom was Dr.Watson. He had originally posted here under the handle CrickandWatson (IIRC; you can’t go back and search to be sure, these days :(), and then I believe he shortened it to Dr.Watson here, even before he began posting at Fathom.
There has been some controversy about his death. No one has been able to find an obit in the Hartford Courant that matches what we knew, or believed we knew, about him. According to his postings, he lived in the Hartford area, where he ran a business, had a family, and all that. When people with links to the community die, your obit, death notice, whatever, appears in the paper. I looked for several days afterwards, and couldn’t find anyone remotely matching him.
Melin, who knew him best, says there’s no question that he’s dead. How she knows this, she hasn’t said, at least not in a forum that I had access to. I have no interest in raising the subject with her; I think very highly of Melin, and Doc was someone we had radically different views about.
Right around the beginning of the year, he got pissed at all of us at Fathom (apparently because we weren’t won over by his brand of illogic, when he applied it in the debate forum) and, after an emphatic goodbye post, ceased posting. His death, whether for real or for online consumption, came just a little over two months later.
When I see an obit of someone whose decription roughly matches with what we knew of him online, I’ll believe he’s genuinely dead. Until then, I’ll continue to have my doubts.
I died a while back. But I was only mostly dead. And I know enough of you IRL, that I am quite positive that my shuffleing off this mortal coil would be duly noted here. Not sure if it would be with laughter or tears ;), but hey, I’ll be dead, why would I care?
Dr.Watson departed this board in April of 2000; he’d posted as Watson&Crick before that. IIRC, that first username was shared with some acquaintance of his. I don’t recall a username of Doc Watson on this board.
There was another Dr. Watson (note the space after “Dr.”) who passed briefly through GD almost a year ago.