Wayne Green, W2NSD, one of the real characters of amateur radio passed away Friday. This from the Wayne’s World website:
Wayne Green passed away this morning in a peaceful, painless transition from this life on Earth. An eternal optimist, and one who loved to share his never-ending zest for life, he was a friend to many and will be missed greatly. Wayne was not afraid of dying and was very much ready to embark on his next great adventure to the afterlife.
If you would like to write a note to him or about him, please email it to [email protected] and I will share it here on Wayne’s blog.
There are already many tributes there. Even if you didn’t know him like many hams of my generation did, it would be worthwhile to read some of them. More information about W2NSD, can be found on his Wikipedia page. TheARRL website also has a story on Wayne Green.
I met Wayne for the first time back in the 70’s when I was in college. Microcomputers were the hot commodity then with experimenters, and I had some ideas for ham radio applications, but lacked the funding to kick start either a kit or assembled product. Wayne was going to give a talk on how to break into the coming microcomputer boom at the Atlanta Hamfest and computer show.
I sat through the presentation, nodding at all the glowing future in microcomputers that Wayne painted for us. After the talk, I hurried up to meet him, and ask him for some business contacts. The idea is that I figured there were guys out there brimming over with money waiting to jump at my ideas, and fund me.
What I got instead, was something I was not expecting. “First thing you do,” Wayne said, “is get a haircut, shave off that beard, and put on a suit and tie. Because whether you like it or not, those are the kinds of people you will have to deal with.”
Of course, I was the typical geek ‘wooley booger’ college student, with long hair, beard, and wearing a T-shirt and ‘holy’ jeans. I was taken aback, because I figured that anyone could see I was a genius once I got to talk to them, and cleaning up and dressing up for the occasion was not even on my radar.
It took a while for that advice to sink in, but eventually I did just that, and even though I didn’t start my own business, I ended up doing embedded software development in a number of different situations over a three-decade-plus career.
Great story, Dave. Thanks for sharing it.