Harry Dewey has died

[Jim McKenney]

Harry Dewey, founder of the Alpine-L listserv, has died. His obituary appeared today in the Washington Post; he was 95. He passed away on Wednesday, February 17.

[Maggi Young]

Harry Dewey made a great contribution to the alpine world by his efforts with Alpine L  quite apart from his professional career.
We can only send  condolences to his loved ones.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?pid=177837443

[Maggi Young]

See this obituary of Harry Dewey, written by Bobby Ward, on the NARGS  site :
https://www.nargs.org/news/2016-02-25/harry-t-dewey-obituary

[David Nicholson]

The passing of Harry Dewey certainly brings home to me the importance of the visions he had in the early 1990’s about harnessing the potential of the Internet as a means of exchanging knowledge, views, skills and fellowship with like-minded alpine gardeners across the world which led to Alpine-L.

From that initial vision and as more began to participate in Alpine-L more began to see how right he had been. A means of sharing pictures followed (not without some difficulty at first) and I still remember, when I joined the SRGC Forum in the early-2000’s, the age it took to download an image on my connection. As Internet connections began to get a little quicker and forum software began to be developed others took Harry’s vision still further and today it’s common-place, but still a marvel to me, that I can look at plants growing now in a garden, or a mountain-top, in New Zealand and carry out a conversation with the grower and get nearly the same level of enjoyment in a Southern hemisphere Spring as I have in my very wet Northern hemisphere Spring garden.

It’s a truism that today's “new” very rapidly becomes tomorrow’s “common” and eventually the thrust of development moves on. We see this now in Facebook and Twitter and some will take to, and further extend, this kind of communication. But just as Alpine-L still functions on some of us will take to the “new” and some of us will remain “common”.

Whatever, without Harry’s initial vision I doubt if many of the new initiatives would have moved at the pace they have. In alpine gardening circles in the UK we have, quite rightly,  long respected the memory of George Forrest and Reginald Farrer in the SRGC and AGS medals awarded for plant excellence. Harry Dewey’s achievement in his lifetime for alpine gardening is different to both of the above but in my view is of equal importance and I would like to see his memory enshrined in some kind of national/international award.

[brianw]

*****
Whatever, without Harry’s initial vision I doubt if many of the new initiatives would have moved at the pace they have. In alpine gardening circles in the UK we have, quite rightly,  long respected the memory of George Forrest and Reginald Farrer in the SRGC and AGS medals awarded for plant excellence. Harry Dewey’s achievement in his lifetime for alpine gardening is different to both of the above but in my view is of equal importance and I would like to see his memory enshrined in some kind of national/international award.
*****
I would echo this. Harry guided me when I joined Alpine-L in late 1999. In January 2000 when I first posted, almost certainly on dialup on my first works laptop, (no broadband at home then for me) there were over 300 posts, many from well known UK names.

[ranunculus]

I couldn't agree more, David … Harry was an innovator, a visionary, a stickler for methodology and grammatical accuracy, a founding father of alpine interaction on the internet and a thoroughly kind and decent gentleman. History will recognise his place in our hobby and we, his contemporaries should push for recognition now. Well said, Mr Nicholson.

[David Nicholson]

I'm pleased that Brian responded to my post on the day I wrote it and I'm even more pleased that Cliff had added a further one today. I have to say though that I'm more than a little disappointed that there have been so few responses.

Is it perhaps that there are so few of us still involved in this gorgeous Forum of ours who actually participated in those founding days and can see and feel how important was Harry Dewey's role? Or just that the "youngsters" of today will not develop a feel, or appreciation, for history until they are "oldsters" too?

[ranunculus]

A different era, David …

[Maggi Young]

When Harry Dewey started Alpine L - I had never used a computer !

[johnw]

When Harry Dewey started Alpine L - I had never used a computer !

And we hadn't either aside from using the ancient in-house system at work. We bought a computer and joined Alpine-L in 1997 or 98, the Alpine-L worked surprisingly well in its day despite dial-up and the hours waiting for pix to download, to say nothing of the fateful personal emails that were mis-posted to the A-L to the horror of the sender!  Harry's contributions, innovations and work have been no better expressed, as Cliff says, than by David Niocholson.  Though I never met Harry I can thank him for introducing me to a whole network of plants people sparking a frenzy of emails back & forth across the Atlantic.  I thank Harry for many lasting friendships, visits and exchanges....

Going though my archived emails some of the luminaries we had access to in those early days, quite mind-boggling: 

Jim McClements
James Waddick
John Grimshaw
Ernie O'Byrne
Helen Dillon
Jack Eliot
Louise Parsons
John Good
Dick Gustafson
Joy Bishop
John Lonsdale
Herman van Beusekom
Tony Avent
Barbara van Achterberg
Bill Dijk
Jerry Flintoff
Jim Fox!
Gene Bush
Roger Barlow
Bob Potterton
Steve Doonan
Pat Bender
Michael Campbell!
Tom Stuart
Joy Bishop
Michael Baron
Andreas Dumbrowski
Hubert Agback
Panayoti Kelaidis!
Loren Russel
Roger Whitlock!
Mark McDonough!
Jim Shields!
Larry Thomas
Nina Lambert
Bobby Ward
Gary Dunlop
and many, many more.

Thank-you Harry.

johnw

[Maggi Young]

 Quite a list of Scottish Rock Members there - and current forumists, too!

[David Nicholson]

Thanks for responding John. Lovely to re-call some of the names from years past and glad to see that many of them are still posting somewhere.

[Maggi Young]

An affectionate memory of Harry Dewey from John Grimshaw : HERE