![[Home]](skybirdwhitebgsmall.jpg)
On Tuesday 15 Nov 2005, Gary Bourgois, WB8EOH—the Eccentric Old Hippy—went silent key[1]. Gary got many of us started as dishheads, and talk radio hosts. He has now moved on to join his wife, Elaine, on his favourite airshift—eternity—where nothing is scrambled, and the signals never fade.
Thank you, Gary for everything.
I was hoping I could meet you. Maybe in the afterlife.
-Rob
Dear Gary, I will miss you and you were responsible for turning me from some hack that just called your professional show, to a real journalist that would still love to call your show in heaven. Rest in Fond Memories
Love
Kevin Lee
Gary, may you rest in peace among the stars and satellites you so loved.
The picture above is of Gary and MIBN1 (Dan) when he and his son Ricky went to visit Gary (I believe this picture was taken in 2001). Pop4/MIBN1 provided T1 bandwidth and the main feed shoutcast server for Gary, free of charge, for many years.
Even though JimmyLee? and I felt we had to move on, we never lost sight of the wonderful talent Gary had with radio in the early days when JimmyLee? first found Gary's show on cband audio in the fall of 1992 after we went to pick up our first BUD (at home, JL had one at his shop sometime in summer/fall of 1991) from Pungo (out past Virginia Beach), Virgina. (EDIT: The date we got our dish at home was one year off. I was confusing when JL got his 12' the year before with when we got the 10' dish at home.)
JimmyLee? and I both helped Gary for well over 5 years, on a daily basis and made three, oops, four annual trips there to work on his computers and some other equipment to keep them running so Gary could continue on radio - all of which were donated (along with other support donations) by generous folks over the years from the likes of; John Clapp, Bill Harris, George Antunes, Dana Pretzer (CBANDTALK), Bill in Colorado, Mike Reynolds (w0kie), Don Knowlton, Scott Mitchell (FNL archivist), and so many others in the TVRO community (forgive me for not naming them all -way too many to list). We had hoped that, in helping Gary all those years, that he would one day get back to his early glory days of satellite radio that we all knew and loved, and although we didn't have much money to donote, we did have time, and well, we donated ALOT of time over those years.
I still think Captain's Question Time was one of my most favorite parts of FNL. The Captain and Gary had a marvelous raporte on the radio.
We miss you Gary.
JimmyLee? and Bambi
Picture of JimmyLee? and me when we visited Donk7 in Michican on our way back from our last trip (2004) to Marquette to visit and help Gary.
FLASH - REST IN PEACE My friend. Keep the TVRO dream alive up in heaven and peak up GOD's BUD when you get a chance.
Dana Pretzer
What very sad news about Gary. It brings a tear to my eye.
Gary was one of the good guys in life.
I always enjoyed his show and wish him the best in the beyond.
Rest well my friend.
- Bill Knight
Rest in peace, Gary. I know you're watching the birds from the other side now, keeping an eye on things and watching the scatter from the uplinks missing the birds.
I never made it to Marquette, and I regret that deeply. I've donated time, money and LOTS of equipment to SkyBird over the years (including two brand new AMD64 systems for SkyBird last year after the infamous power surge blew everything up that I'm sure will keep SkyBird running for years to come.) I recall he sent me the original Great White North disks so I could recover various text documents from them and installed them on what would be the first generation of the SkyBird machines, way back when I installed his first RedHat? boxes.
I was even going to ship out two more satellite receivers next week. :-(
Gary, you were a dear friend and I'll miss you deeply; I always looked forward to seeing "Greta W North" on my CallerID?, and now I'll never see it again.
William Kucharski
(Bill in Colorado)
Bill, my name is Byron Lee. I think it'd be a great idea to save any text files from the BBS and send them to Jason Scott to put up on his website. It is www.textfiles.com and he has thousands of Text Files from the old BBS Days. He'd probally be very happy to put those on the site for everyone to download.
I just want to add that I will miss Gary. I didn't know him real well but we had some interaction together. I had him pegged as very interesting eccentic :). I wish I would have had opportunity to his place for a visit. I helped him with some reel to reel manuals. He was a member of our 70sAudioMindset discussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/70sAudioMindset).
So long Gary.... see ya in the sweet by and by some of these days.
Rick Stout
___________________________________________________________________________
I first met Gary in 1979 or 1980 while living in Marquette. Gary and I used to hang out at his studios, located above the Washington Shoe Store, messing around with the studio. I worked on the Flash Frizbone episodes that featured Q-Bummer radio, and can be heard on many of the spots and station IDs. What a blast we had! Gary had a small television transmitter that broadcast on ch. 5, and late at night he'd present "The Cat Show," which more often than not featured a sleeping cat for hours on end. We worked together at Marquette radio stations, and would always leave scripts and stories in each other's mailboxes; more often than not, his contributions to this game had me laughing so hard I could barely recover before going on the air. Gary always had videotapes of bands you had never heard of, audio scraps collected over the years, and the best radio delivery I'd ever heard. "It's time for the news," he'd open. "I'm Gary Bourgois reading it."
Gary was the only person I'd ever met who was so true to himself he didn't care what anyone else thought. Around Marquette he was considered an oddity. One winter his furnace died. He kept warm just by turning on all the computers, receivers, radios, transmitters and recorders in the house. Oh, and televisions. I think at one point he had about 30 of them. That reputation as an oddity grew with his collection of satellite dishes. After I left Marquette, Gary would occasionally send videotapes of his house, proudly showing off his latest dish. I think I have video of him when he only had three dishes. Maybe four.
Of all the people I can say affected the way I look at the world, Gary is in the top five. You either loved Gary or you didn't. There was no middle ground really. His engaging sensitivity toward other beings extended to his beloved cats, a family of skunks that took up residence under his kitchen, and most impressively, to his wife Elaine. When Elaine entered his life he was the happiest I had ever seen him. Due to her illness, they often spent winters apart. A relationship that would seem weird to most people worked for them. And it worked well. Gary was nuts about Elaine. She GOT him. She UNDERSTOOD him. She ACCEPTED him. I admired what they had.
Several years ago I went back to Marquette for a visit. I don't remember why. I drove up to Presque Isle park, a high, heavily forested piece of rock that juts out into Lake Superior. I parked and watched the water. I heard conversation in the truck next to me. It was Gary and Elaine. What a great surprise! We chatted and got caught up, but since we had been in email contact and sent videos back and forth, there wasn't much catching up to do. We just enjoyed the weird sensation of so casually running into each other in this windswept spot, hundreds of miles from where I now lived. It was the last time I ever saw either of them. I'm happy it was such a cool experience!
Gary used to sing a little song when we would shut down the transmitter for the night. Walking to the car for the ride home he'd sing: "Life is just a bowl of cherries, so take it serious, and be a reebius..."
Gary, you were one of the best. I have learned from you. Thank you. Life is a bowl of cherries, right?
Rod Piechowski