Another silent key

[Steve Matzura]

I learned of his passing this afternoon, but knew it was coming for a
long time.

I've known bill since the mid 70's, mostly via amature radio, but I've
heard of him since I was in third grade when some folks with whom I
rode the daily school bus used to complain about him always getting
into trouble with the nuns at the Catholic blind school he attended
for playing with their phones! I never gave him much thought until the
70's when we met on a repeater in his home area quite by happenstance.
We were good friends, although sometimes for years out of touch, ever
since. He tried as best he could to elmer me into the world of
accessible Linux, but I never got into it the way he did, and still
haven't. I last spoke with him from his hospital bed and gave him some
good news, that a server build project he helped me start had finally
been finished successfully and turned over to the client owner, so
when he finally went to his rest, at least that was one thing less he
needed to worry about. That was Bill--always spending time trying to
get others' stuff working. He was a real good egg and is already being
missed.

On Mon, 24 Aug 2015 11:31:58 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:

>Writing to let people know that a long time friend and contributor
>Bill Acker wb2flw passed away last evening.
>
>Bill was responsible for putting our first Redhat and fedora speakup
>enabled distributions together. In more recent years he maintained the
>server where we shared dns services and provided mail and mail backup
>for many members of the community.
>
>He was an avid ham and phone freak and maintained a freeswitch which
>many people using voip still use.
>
>I am going to miss him very much. I'm sure others here will as
>well. He died of complications to his prostate cancer which he's been
>fighting for the past couple years.
>
>73s Bill. It's been a good journey.
>
>   Kirk