Jay Kormann

[edburke]

Firepics regrets to announce the death of member Jay Kormann, user name FireScooby.  Jay was a member of the Firepics OneGroup, Yahoo Group and had been a member of the message boards since they went live in 2004.  His love of the fire service is paralleled by very few and he brought a vast knowledge and enthusiasm to this little corner of the web.  If you ever had the chance to talk to him in person or on the phone, you instantly became aware that he was a truly nice person and will be missed.

[Monrovia1]

I knew Jay from several other boards and I am so very saddened to hear of his passing, I offer my deepest condolences to his family.

[GA_Dave]

I have known Jay for many years, going back to the old American Toy Emergency Vehicles Message Boards.  We're talking about the days of America Online (AOL) and dial up internet!  One day, I received an Instant Massage from Jay, telling me about a new email group he had just discovered - Firepics@onelist.com.  As I recall, he was member 73 and moments later I was member 74.  For those unfamiliar with email groups, they were quite popular back then.  When a member sent an email to the group, all members got a copy.  At the time, the group was averaging about 15 emails each month.
   Within weeks of joining, Jay had spread the word, doubling membership and increasing traffic to over 1500 emails each month.  Not long after, Onelist was sold to Egroups and Firepics continued to grow.  Jay's recruits brought in more new members and activity multiplied.  In time, Yahoo Groups bought out Egroups and Firepics continued to grow.  We had weekly chat sessions and Jay was right in the middle of the action.  There were well over 400 members and the amount of activity was difficult to keep up with, to the point that Yahoo Groups asked Firepics to leave because we were overloading their servers!  It never would have happened without Jay Kormann!

Rest in peace, Brother.