I’ve wanted to write about this for months, now that I have a blog I can finally do it.
Earlier this year, I found out, thru Twitter that fellow SQL Family member Larry Toothman (@IowaTechBear), had suffered a stroke. Having never met Larry in person, but having spoken to him on occasion via Twitter I wanted to let him know that people in his SQL community wished him well. That morning I tweeted that I was going to collect money for flowers to send him on behalf of the SQL Family.
Unfortunately, we soon got word that Larry was on life support. A few days later he passed away. Within those few days and the week that followed the outpouring of generosity the SQL Family was incomprehensible. The small flower fund I was trying for turned into a substantial memorial fund.
To collect the funds, I set up a PayPal account and tweeted that I would continue to accept money for a few days. The money would be used to send something to Larry’s husband on our behalf. I really only expected but a few $5 donations here and there. To my surprise it took just a simple tweet and the dollar total rapidly climbed. I could not believe that SQL Family members started blindly sending me money (Me, just a DBA, in Virginia that happens to tweet a lot).
People I never met were giving me $25, $50 and $100 at a time towards this fund. Let’s think about that for a moment. What group of “strangers” do you know that just sends money to help the family of “another DBA from Iowa”? That is exactly what happened.
Over the next week, money continued flooding in from all over the world. I got donations from as far away as Denmark, Australia, South Africa, Norway, Canada, London, and all over the United States. Some people would send me a direct message to simply say they didn’t know Larry, but wanted to donate so that his husband knew people from across the globe cared.
All in all the family raise over $2000, Frank (@IowaCub), Larry’s husband, was overcome by our generosity and truly grateful for what we had done.
This just another example of the unique nature of our SQL Family, thanks to everyone that contributed.
