[nycbug-talk] Cameron Grant

[Trish Lynch]

Hi everyone, its taken me a while to get around to writing this from 
yesterday.

Cameron Grant was a FreeBSD committer (cg at freebsd.org)who rewrote the 
sound system in its 
entirety for FreeBSD 4 back in 1999/2000. Cameron was severely disabled 
and was confined to his house/bed for several years. His wife Kris, who 
moved to the UK and took care of him full-time, and then they got married 
was also an important part of the FreeBSD community, since she helped him 
with all his work.

On Sunday, March 20th, Cameron Grant passed away. I have been in contact 
with Kris, because they were both extremely good friends of mine, and I 
have been trying to offer as much support as possible to them.

I am passing on this information for Kris, who really could use our 
community's support right now:

"Some people have asked me if I want flowers sent, or would rather
money given to charities. Cameron was never really big on cut flowers
(he hated buying them for me, because they just die) so I've been
trying to think of things he would've wanted to see helped out. So far
I've come up with:


1. Me (Cameron always wanted to give me everything I ever wanted. He
didn't get a chance to really make any kind of provision for me, and
he always wanted to.)

(Just as an aside, supporting Cameron was her only decent means of 
support, it was a full-time job for her, this is not a greed-based thing, 
in my personal opinion, she could use the support, however she has given 
many other charities to which donations in Cam's honor can be given for 
those who are uncomfiortable with this)

2. Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital
(http://www.gosh.org/donate/index.html), or the Royal Brompton
Hospital ( 
http://www.rbh.nthames.nhs.uk/InternetSection/fundraising/fundraising.asp)
(they're pretty much tied. They both did masses for him.)

3. A rat rescue charity (http://www.theratrescue.co.uk/ ), or failing
that, the RSPCA or your local animal rescue. (Animals, particularly
our pet rats, made a big difference to the quality of his life, and
he's always loved them.)

4. The Muscular Dystrophy Organization
(http://www.muscular-dystrophy.org/fundraising/index.html) (while it
seems now that the diagnosis might not have been correct, since he was
13 Cameron believed he had two forms of MD, and the organization
provides assistance, equipment, and information to people with MD.)

5. The FreeBSD project (am looking for a url for this)(Some of you may 
know that Cameron was a
FreeBSD committer, and completely rewrote the sound system and created
newpcm for the FreeBSD 4 kernel. He thought a lot of FreeBSD, and save
the desktop computer, which ran Windows for accessiblity reasons,
everything else in the house he could get at ran freeBSD exclusively.)

I know it's not exactly a short list, but I wanted people to be able
to pick a cause they supported, too. I do feel quite strange about putting 
myself on the list right up at the top, but I'm trying to make and order 
this list as Cameron would have. (In fact, I'm friends-locking this so I 
don't get fandom_wanked or something, but please, feel free to share 
whichever information you think appropriate with other people.)"


Thanks all,

 	Trish


-- 
Trish Lynch					   trish at bsdunix.net
Ecartis Core Team 			      trish at listmistress.org
EFNet IRC Operator/SysAdmin @ irc.dkom.at             AilleCat at EFNet
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