Home > Archive >  2009 >  October >  3

Father's Day

Saturday, October 03, 2009 by Dave Winer.

I spent most of last week in NY, visiting my parents. Permalink to this paragraph

My father has been gravely ill, and as it turns out this was my last visit to see him.  Permalink to this paragraph

This morning he died.  Permalink to this paragraph

He's had a long decline and plenty of time to prepare for the end. This week we talked honestly and openly about the big things. In June, on his 80th birthday I wrote to him that he was my hero. There was a lot of forgiveness in that statement, over the years, we had focused too much on the bad times, and not enough on the time at the beginning and at the end, which were good, loving, generous and fair. Permalink to this paragraph

There's no doubt my father loved the little boy who looked up to him. There's no doubt we both had trouble adjusting to the man who took the little boy's place. Permalink to this paragraph

I was lucky that my father lived so long. Yet today there is a huge void, a puzzle, an unknown. How do you fill the space occupied by someone who looms so large. Permalink to this paragraph

My father fought for my life when I was young and had a ruptured appendix.  Permalink to this paragraph

When he discovered the beauty of outliners he said the nicest thing a father can say about a son -- "Every day is father's day." Permalink to this paragraph

We searched for my father, lost in the melee after the 9/11 attacks. His picture only appeared that once on Scripting News.  Permalink to this paragraph

Leon Winer was born on June 17, 1929 and died on October 3, 2009. Permalink to this paragraph

He will be missed by his family. Permalink to this paragraph




 
   Recent stories


A picture named dave.jpgDave Winer, 54, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

http://twitter.com/davewiner



Dave Winer Mailto icon



© Copyright 1994-2009 Dave Winer Mailto icon.

Last update: 10/3/2009; 4:50:33 PM Pacific. "It's even worse than it appears."

Click here to view blogs commenting on  RSS 2.0 feed.