RIP, William Greenfield Lack

A long-time user of Acorn computers (BBC, Master, Archimedes) and RISC OS, William Lack, has died at the age of 74. He wasn’t a prolific communicator on any of the mailing lists and I can’t find him in any of the Usenet groups or the ROOL forum. Between September 2008 and December 2013, he posted only four times (twice to each of Archive on Line and the Virtual Acorn list) according to my records.

I met William for the first time more than a decade ago at a mutual friend’s 60th birthday celebration. My host, Tim, showed me a book entitled The Monumental Brasses of Hertfordshire. Feigning interest, I opened it only to discover that it had been produced for typesetting on Virtual RiscPC using David Pilling’s Ovation Pro. Tim pointed to someone I’d not met and told me he was the Acorn user and one of the co-authors of the book.

William and his colleagues have been engaged in recording, county by county, all the monumental brasses of the British Isles. At his death, the project remains incomplete but he has taken steps to ensure all his work, not just the Ovation Pro files but also his databases, are available for his colleagues to continue without him.

Tim and I visited him in hospital in Shrewsbury in the middle of May. He was receiving treatment for cancer. He was in good spirits and much of the conversation ended up on Acorn/RISC OS matters. We had hoped to visit him again but then came the news that he had died on Thursday 30th May.

William was a highly respected professional conservator of monumental brasses and the following links, here and also here , give an idea of the kind of work he carried out and an insight into the size of the task he and his colleagues had set themselves. His books show that he was equally professional in his mastery of Ovation Pro.

It is with some shame that I must admit that I cannot picture Mr Lack, but my records show him to be a staunch supporter of RISC OS software, and even note his interest in restoring monumental brasses. I tend to get confused with two other customers by the name of Lack which I know is bad form :( Please pass our regards on to the family if you have any further contact. The RISC OS scene is that bit diminshed by his passing.

I sometimes think that we lose more community members to the grim reaper than we do to Bill Gates et al these days. This (and a few other reports recently) reinforces that.

All good wishes/thoughts/prayers for William G Lack and family.

monumental brasses

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Oh, it’s “a church thing”. Here I was hoping monumental brasses would be like really big tubas. Oh well…

lose more community members to the grim reaper than we do to Bill Gates et al these days.

Given the “embrace, extend and extinguish”, some might consider the two to be equivalent.
Plus, I think we lose more to the giant penguin than to Microsoft these days.

The RISC OS scene is that bit diminshed by his passing.

+1. I might not have known him, but he used RISC OS and OvationPro. Every little bit of support is what keeps us going.