sad news

[Carol]

For those of us who have been around here long enough to remember when we were on line almost every night with a live chat, you will remember Sarah Clark, aka Swartz (also a moderator here). I found out last night that Sarah has died. She was a calligrapher, former employee of Hallmark and sign painter and woodworker. And a friend.

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Carol,
This is terribly sad news. I never met her, but she certainly had some influence on all of us using this Forum. In fact, Sarah started the very first Hand Lettering Forum and ran it for a long time. The original forum was hosted on a free site. But as the site began to get some traffic, the host started filling the pages with unwanted pop-ups. It became almost unbearable. About the same time, several of us were starting "TheLetterheads.com" and that's when we opted to move the Forum to the new site and host it without the popups. Eventually, we migrated it to the current pHp version and most of the costs of hosting the two sites are now paid by the Denver Chapter of Letterheads.

If you look at the list of Moderators at the top of the page, SarahC is still shown as one of the moderators. I think we should leave her name there as long as the Forum is active. She certainly had the Letterhead "spirit".

Best regards,
Mike Jackson / co-administrator

[Carol]

That's true, Mike. I had fortgotten that she started this group. How long ago was that?

I think it would be nice to leave her name up there. Good idea.
C.

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Carol,
I just looked back at some of the folders from the site at TheLetterheads.com and also for the first messages on the Forum. The oldest ones go back to 2-11-2003. I think that'd be the birthdate of the site and the change of Sarah Clark's (Schwartz) early version of the Forum to this one.

I don't think she was in great health even then. At the time, she was beginning to do more photography. I always hoped she'd post more here, but she was pretty quiet.

Even though she hasn't been too active here, we'll still miss her!

Mike Jackson

[Kent Smith]

Sad news indeed when one of our own passes.

I agree we should keep her name up in memorium.

[bob gamache]

God bless Sarah

[Doug Bernhardt]

This IS sad news. I also remember the early days well. It was my first computer and it was early days of IRC when a 28 point whatever modum was king. Sarah was quiet as Mike suggests but she started that first page am guessing some months before it migrated to the old "hand lettering forum" In the few bits of e-mail we exchanged I believe (working on memory is not so great these days) she lived in Arkansas and had a hobby farm and wood working/carving business as well as what Carol mentioned. It would be good to get the facts as she was pretty influencial when it comes to "our thing" here. This site she and you guys/others started has gone a long way to furthering the ideals of education, sharing and excellence.