Really Good Quotes

Dear Quotaholics,

Today’s issue will be a departure from our usual fare. Today is dedicated to our friend “Sied”.

On Wednesday I mentioned that Sied was going to be taking some time off. In fact he had notified me, just last week, that he had been ill and was no longer able to continue writing. He had been diagnosed with cancer but wanted to be able to write an occasional article when he was “up to it”.

I planned to take on another writer yet save Sied’s spot for his return. On Tuesday night the staff and I were informed that Sied had unexpectedly passed away.

As you can imagine I was stunned. I was still reeling from his diagnosis, but having spoken to him only a few weeks ago, I never expected this news.

It’s funny how the internet has changed our relationships. Even though we never met face to face I feel that Sied was not just an acquaintance, but a friend, a part of my extended RGQ family, a family that was there for me in my time of need. I hope that Sied realized that we were here for him. I hope there was comfort in that….

Being a Marine Sied had everything under control. He had written this weeks articles ahead of time. His last article appears in it’s regular spot today. He even thought of his fellow staffers in his final hours. We received the following note from his children;

For all the friends and family regarding our beloved Dad, MgySgt F.P. "Sied" Siedentopf has passed away on Memorial Day 05/25/2009 about 11:15 pm. He is loved by all and will be greatly missed. I know you’ll miss all of his emails that kept us busy trying to read all of them!!! His final request was for us to send his last email for him. He loved and enjoyed sharing all the jokes,etc with all of you.

For information on funeral arrangements please contact Anderson Funeral home 843-524-7144

With Kind Regards,
Cindy & Debra

I hope his family knows how important Sied was to all of us. His articles were only part of his contribution to RGQ. Many of the jokes I have used came from his joke newsletters. Almost daily I would receive links to funny videos, pictures, story ideas, etc..

I know that Memorial Day has been an extra special day for Bruce and I since we lost our father’s who were veterans. Now Memorial Day will be a day for me to also remember a special Marine. A Marine who’s face I had never seen before today.

Farewell Sied,

Cindy and Debra-

I was traveling in Denmark when this mail was sent. As a matter of fact, my birthday is May 25, and you can imagine that the news is shocking.

My name is Bruce Marshall, and I founded the e-zine Really Good Quotes for which he was writing. I saw his talent and asked if he would like to be a regular contributor, and that is how my relationship with him started.

I’m at a loss for words, but I imagine that you are as well. There simply are no words to express both the shock and great sense of loss that accompany his passing. For that reason, I will not attempt to try.

I will tell you that although I never met him, I had immense respect for him as a man, as a humorist, and as a writer. His witty, eclectic thoughts graced our pages and helped to make RGQ a far better publication. Speaking as a publisher, I know his loss will leave a great void in our little e-zine for both readers and staff.

Speaking as a friend, I can just tell you that I will miss him greatly. He was a unique character and just an all-around wonderful guy.

Rather than trying to focus on my own feelings of loss, I feel it far more appropriate to focus on yours. The emptiness and shock that we who knew him peripherally feel can only be infinitesimal compared to what you are going through.

I was very fortunate. My own father passed when he was 92, so I was able to have him far longer than most. At his age it was not unexpected to lose him, yet it was still extremely difficult. I still miss him and think of him daily.

I truly believe that missing someone is nothing more than a tribute to what they meant. It’s only those who had a true impact on our lives in one way or another that we remember, and Sied will be one of those who will be remembered by all who knew him.

I can only wish you peace in a difficult time. We all understand that death is a part of the cycle, yet that knowledge does not make it easier.

Good luck, and please accept my my most sincere good wishes for you and your family.

Bruce Marshall

P.S. In case you’ve never seen the writings he offered for our e-zine, you can go to the group homepage at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reallygoodquotes/ and scroll midway down the page to the search box and enter "The Bad Sied" within quotation marks. That was his signature line. If you just searched for Sied, you’d find comments and reactions to him as well as his writings, but the narrowed search will allow you to see just how much a part of the crazy internet community he really was.

We are family.

The RGQ community at large is one big extended family. To my mind, and surely in my heart, the writers here have become my brothers and sisters. There are even times when Tim is acting up, I want to scream out "I’m going to tell on you."

Sied recently told us he was ill. He first began feeling under the weather in April. He was going to take time off from writing. This must have been a monumental decision for him. Sied, Master Sergeant Siedentopf, did not give up his hard won perks. And writing here was a perk.

He also wrote for Milspeak and became an integral part of the organization. I first heard the news of his untimely passing from Sally Drumm, owner of the Milspeak domain.

Sied was family, there, too.

None of his families, not his flesh and blood family, nor his Milspeak family, nor us here at RGQ - no one was prepared for this sudden loss, the empty space, this rift in the time-space continuum.

Sied, a private man, a stoic man, a Marine was gravely ill, but only recently diagnosed. He was waiting for test results to come back on Tuesday. Monday evening, he felt poorly and went to the emergency room. He died at 11:15 PM.

Sally sent us some pictures, one is here in the Image ‘N That space.

I miss you already, dear sweet sied. I hope you are in some better place, a place earned during your time here with us. Until we meet again – Semper Fi.

Your little sister,

Frederick Paul Siedentopf, Jr. was born Feb. 5, 1942 in Queens, NY, to Frederick Paul and Madeline (Stoffel) Siedentopf, Sr. Fred passed away on Memorial Day, May 25, 2009. He was predeceased by his parents and survived by devoted wife Judy, whom he married Dec. 2, 1972; a sister, Patty Moakly of Phoenix, AZ; two daughters, Cindy K. (Michael S.) Gay of St. Helena and Debra D. (Robert “Andy” V.) Anderson of Augusta, GA; two grandchildren: Steven L. King, Jr. of Augusta and Ashley M. Boyles of Beaufort; and three great grandchildren.

Master Gunnery Sergeant F.P. Siedentopf retired from the United States Marine Corps after serving thirty-one years on active duty. Starting as a Reservist “grunt” in 1959, he integrated into the Regular Marine Corps upon graduation from recruit training and opted for training as an avionics technician. After training at NAS Memphis, TN and assignment to Sea Duty aboard the USS Boxer, LPH-4, Fred participated in Cuban Missile Crisis rescue operations. In 1968, after Sea Duty and various postings to aviation units in the states and abroad, he retrained as a technician on the Tactical Air Operations Center (TAOC), at the time the most sophisticated computer system for aircraft interception. Fred was a Cold War Veteran and Vietnam Veteran, who served with the first combat Marine Air Control Squadron in Vietnam. Until his retirement in 1990, he served in various technical billets and logistics billets as both a Supply Officer/Supply Chief and Logistics Officer/Logistics Chief. He developed the MIMMS system, still in use, to track resupply in the Corps. His personal decorations include the Good Conduct Medal, the Navy Achievement Medal (2 awards), the Navy Commendation Medal (2 awards), and the Meritorious Service Medal.

Fred’s service to his country continued after active duty, as public affairs officer of Marine Corps League YFD #1154, in service to Beaufort Military Affairs Committee, Beaufort Chamber of Commerce, and Beaufort Military Retiree Council. His passion, beyond love of family, Corps, and community, was writing. An avid Letter to the Editor writer, Fred was also a contributing writer to Bruce’s Really Good Quotes writing the column, “Imp-Revised News” as “The Bad Sied.” He was co-founder and co-editor of Milspeak Memo. “Sied” was a warrior, master leader, mentor, loving husband, father, grandfather, and friend with a wonderful sense of humor who will be genuinely missed by the many people whose lives he touched.

The family will receive friends Sunday, May 31, 4-6 pm, at Anderson Funeral Home. A memorial service will be held Monday, June 1, 1:30 pm, Anderson Chapel, followed by full military honors at the National Cemetery and a reception at the VFW Post, Castle Rock Road, Burton.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” - C.S. Lewis


“Friendship is Love, without his wings.” - Lord Byron

I’ve written several pieces dealing with the development of “City Cars”, these are small, urban, transport, vehicles, which use little fuel and take up very little space. Whether these vehicles are designed as all electric, electric-fuel hybrids, or strictly fuel powered, they all share some common features.

They are diminutive in size to save on weight and to be more maneuverable in city environments. When you shrink a car that much, you either end up with something that looks like an egg on a roller skate or a box with casters. It’s hard to design in a sweeping hood with exhaust pipes like the great roadsters of the 1930’s. At least we aren’t assailed by the absurd wings of the 1960’s.

Designers need to ensure that there is adequate room for the driver and at least one passenger, some storage room for taking purchases home, and of course room for a spare tire and jack. It makes me think about “Clown Cars” in the circus…they were, or are, smaller and you’d have what seemed like a dozen clowns climb out when it stopped. I’ll bet that some production “City Cars” on the road will eventually be found hauling four or five people which certainly can’t be very safe.

Then along comes a nut. This Brit has created the world’s smallest roadworthy car. If I encountered it while driving, my first thought would be that it was a cardboard box blown onto the road and might just run over it. Dora in Denver likes the “Smiley Face” in the Peapod, and at least it’s big enough to advertise itself. This thing should be kept around and used on roads only as part of a parade.

The Bad Sied

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Friends

My best friend from childhood lived in the house behind mine, diagonally. A quick run through our back yards and we were together. My best friend from high school lived about two miles from my house, as driven in my car – okay, my mother’s car. Closer as the crow flies, but neither of us were crows, so we drove or had to be driven. My young adult friends were neighbors or coworkers. Close at one part of the day or another. In 1996, we got our second computer and it had a modem. I was not very computer savvy, but I did have AOL and could finally send and receive e-mail and met many nice people in chat rooms. My community of friends now spanned the globe.

This new phenomenon, friends you have never met, isn’t really entirely new. In ages past, there was something called “pen pals” and people who had never met would write long letters to each other with weeks or months or even years passing between correspondence. They knew they were separated by distances too great to travel, but they still wrote. Some were established in school days as a teacher’s project and kept going. Some were people interested in some topic and writing to others who were like minded, some famous and some not. Some of these pen pal letters blossomed into more. Elizabeth Barrett met Robert Browning this way.

Beginning in 1996, my insular world became global. I could instantaneously communicate with people on every continent. It was amazing. You can’t imagine the speed of a 2400 baud modem as compared to the Pony Express.

With this new method of communication came a new set of problems. For me, a word person, one of them was what in the hell do I call these people? They aren’t acquaintances since I’ve never met them. In fact, one could have walked past me at any time and I wouldn’t have known. They weren’t friends for I hardly knew them. I mean, how much of what we say online is the honest, to goodness, all out truth. I never told about the stupid things I did. I never confessed to being less than the picture I wanted to paint. This realm was a world where I could remake myself in my own image. I wouldn’t be petty or mean spirited. I wouldn’t be a klutz or graceless. I would deliver the perfect bon mot or riposte in each verbal dual. Who would know any different? And how many other people were going to reveal their flaws and so why should I? So, how well did any of know each other. That’s not real and it’s not friends. That’s what I told myself. But I’ve been online for over a decade now. I’m a little more comfortable calling my long standing … I still don’t know what to call them, really. We write back and forth. We celebrate and commiserate. We share successes and console over failures.

And now, I not only have e-mail, I’m involved in forums where people are dear to me. I know so much about so many of my friends, but not how they look. They could still walk right past me and I wouldn’t know them. But when something happens, it is real. Cyber is the way we converse, but cyber isn’t where my heart lies.

I still care about people and there are real people on the other end of the electron stream. Many of them I have come to know. I’m still talking to people I first met in an AOL chat room over a decade ago. I’m closer to my online friends than I am with old neighbors from places where I used to live. I still e-mail with them, but not as frequently. Unless I have no e-mail address, then it’s once a year Christmas letters.

But I still feel funny. Some of my best friends, some of the people I run toward to share my happy moments, reach toward for consolation in sad times, and offer a virtual shoulder to when times are tough for them … these people are “virtual” in the world of electronics. But they are real in my heart.

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas. What happens online remains with me, cherished and tended. My friends. Yes, they are my friends.

Sied, I’ve know your first name for a long time, but you are sied to me and always will be. Dear friend, I miss you already. Though we never met, we talked on the phone a couple times and we were … what? Internet Idiots? Cyber Sidekicks? Network Ninnies? Friends. Coworkers. Supporters. Cheerleaders. Always just a click away.

Sleep well. Your friends are still rooting for you.

Patti

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There was an old Sergeant named Sied…

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Limerick rules.  http://freespace.virgin.net/merrick.sheldon/limerickrules.htm 

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