Jerry 'The Freeloader' Holmes

Note to Readers
While all the subscribers who authored columns for StarText were special in their own way, a handful stood out for their extra effort and tireless dedication to helping others. One of those in the latter category was certainly the Jerry Holmes. Jerry, along with Jim Boughton, were both recipients of the highest honor we paid to our columnists, the "EJ Award" (named for Ed Jackson). I can think of no better tribute to Jerry than the following column by StarText columnists Chuck and Terry Mencke. It's reprinted here with their permission.


Your Web Connection
By Chuck and Terry Mencke


Dedicated to helping you untangle the World Wide Web
Volume 2 - Number 10
November 1, 1999

Today's issue will be a little bit different. For those of you who are outside the Star-Telegram or StarText community, this may not be of much interest to you. For those of you who are still within our once close-knit community, it will be. Today's column will focus on the passing of Jerry "Freeloader" Holmes, a dedicated supporter of StarText as well as my mentor. If it wasn't for Jerry's support and encouragement, there would have been no "Startips," "Cruisin' With StarText," and the present "Your Web Connection." Please share in my sense of loss of this very special individual.



Jerry "The Freeloader" Holmes
The Passing of a Friend

On October 12, 1999, the Dallas-Fort Worth online community lost a dedicated supporter and I lost a very dear friend. Jerry had been ill for many years and hadn't been able to write his legendary "Freeloader" column. I found out too late about his passing and the funeral plans in order to attend his funeral, but I have spent many hours the past few days thinking back on all the wonderful hours we spent together online. Jerry was one of those special people who was always there to lend a hand with all of us "newbies." ...

(The following is taken from Jerry's bio.)

In 1984, Jerry's boss started bringing his TRS-80 Model 100 to work and at noon would let Jerry play with StarText. One of the StarText columns [he saw] was Ed Jackson's column and Jerry got hooked. He continued to read StarText at noon for almost a year until he saved up enough money to purchase his own TRS-80 Model I the early part of 1984.

In August of that year he subscribed to StarText. After several months of writing back and forth with Ed Jackson about his column, Ed started talking to Jerry about a column of his own. Rob Yoder, a member of a local computer club which Jerry belonged to, was writing a column on StarText and included a short BASIC (computer language) program at the end of each column. Jerry talked to Rob and he agreed that there was plenty of room for two columns with that format. Thus was born "The Freeloader."

Jerry said that most of his friends were made on StarText through E-mail. (He even discovered the Ed Jackson on StarText was the "Edwin" Jackson he had befriended as a youth, and he credits StarText with restoring that special bond that the two had shared years before.) Typically Jerry received and answered over 100 messages a week and loved every one of them. He claims that the mail is the best part of StarText.

An interesting sidebar to Jerry's story follows...

Thanksgiving wedding: StarText reunites friends after 50 years

By Monica Stavish - Fort Worth Star-Telegram

EULESS - It took half a century, but thanks to the Information Superhighway and quite possibly fate, Jerry Holmes and Monica Hickey will be married on Thanksgiving.

Holmes and Hickey, both in their early 60s, were childhood friends in Cleburne during the Great Depression. Their lives took them in different directions until a mutual friend helped them interface -- through StarText, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's electronic information system.

That was two months ago. Now the exuberant duo have been rushing around getting a marriage license and rings while planning the big day.

"First we're going to have dinner, then watch the Cowboys game, then get married," Holmes said.

They chose to get married on Thanksgiving for a simple reason, Holmes said. "Because we figure we have so much to be thankful for," he said, standing in the middle of an apartment filled with moving boxes. A Euless resident for 15 years, he said he plans to move to his bride's home in the South Hills section of Fort Worth, where she has lived for about 35 years.

The couple's circuitous saga began in the late 1930s, when they were playmates at his grandmother's house. Holmes admits that he had a crush on Hickey.

"I liked her because she was a tomboy and could keep up with me shooting rubber guns," he said. "She was a cute little gal."

Hickey said she felt the same way.

"He said I taught him long division," she said, laughing, "I don't remember that. I remember him as a boy of summer. My neatest memory is when we were 10 and 11. I thought we were getting ready to have our first kiss when our moms came home."

As so often happens with childhood chums, the two went separate ways. Still, they have found many similarities in their lives. She married, had two children and divorced 34 years ago. He married, had two children and divorced nine years ago. Each has two grandchildren.

"We never thought about each other in those years," said Hickey, a substitute teacher.

The couple's seemingly whirlwind courtship was kindled in September. Holmes, a technical support engineer for Microsoft Corp., described the reunion in his StarText column, The Freeloader, this way:

"One of my really good friends was writing a message to me on StarText a while back when this friend of hers came in. She (Hickey) saw my name on the letter and said she used to know someone by that name down in Cleburne when she was a kid. Betty (Quimby), my friend, told her she thought I had spent some time in Cleburne. The friend asked her (Quimby) to ask me what my mother's maiden name was. So Betty asked me. It turned out that her friend was my first crush oh, so many years."

The coincidence is even more startling.

"In 15 years, I've been to her house maybe four times," Hickey said. "So this is really odd that I would be there."

A surprising meeting took place -- fittingly -- as a StarText gathering at which Holmes received the Ed Jackson Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributor.

"Betty brought Martha," Holmes recalled. "She came up. I had a sandwich in one hand and my mouth was full of sandwich. Martha said, 'Unbutton my jacket. Now look at my chest.' She had on a T-shirt that had a picture of herself on it. The picture was taken when she was around 7 years old." Although Hickey still chuckles about her surprise, she said that there is always hope for a second chance.

"In a matter of a moment, something neat can happen that'll change your life," she said.

Holmes said he agrees. After battling bladder cancer for a year, he recently received good news about his condition.

"This all happened at once," he said. "Betty, the award. So you can bet I've got a ticket to the lottery."

Ed Jackson, mentioned in the above article, was StarText's first subscriber columnist. Subscriber columnists were, and still are, a proud tradition within the StarText community. Ed mentored and urged Jerry into writing a column and Jerry mentored and urged me to start writing an online column. Jerry was always there to help me along the way, supporting me when I was thinking about stopping while always being a good friend to everyone online, especially the "newbies." Jerry never failed to answer an email very promptly. He was always there for us and I'm sure he and Ed are up there writing up a storm for an entirely new audience.

Jerry's last column was written September 6, 1996. Due to his progressing health problems, it became very painful for Jerry to sit at the keyboard for any length of time.

For those of you that wonder why Jerry was called "The Freeloader" is was because he provided neat little programs with each column for us to download. For those of you that are of the Internet generation, this is no big deal because you can find programs anywhere on the Net. But, 10 years ago, this wasn't the case. We were all thirsting after any little program we could get our hands on. So now, you know why Jerry was called "The Freeloader."

Jerry I hope you're up there reading this. Thank you for the dedication you had for StarText. Thank you for the friendship you had for all your online friends. We're all better people for knowing someone as wonderful as you. We love you Jerry. The Freeloader is going to be missed, but never forgotten.

The Great Scratch Pad Caper

Of all the stories that came out of StarText, the one that never fails to make me smile is the one about scratch pads.

To say StarText was a "low budget" operation could be the understatement of all time.

As proof of that, I offer up something I affectionately refer to as "The Scratch Pad Caper."

It started when StarText Editor Christine Russell asked if the staff could get some scratch pads to have at their workstations.

Typically that would have been handled by our in-house "Job Shop," which took care of internal printing orders. While jobs were done at cost, they still were charged to the department who submitted it. While normally scratch pads didn't merit a strict review and approval process, at the time StarTert was struggling to become profitable, so everything got close scrutiny.

When I spoke to my boss Joe about it, he mulled it over and offered up an alternative.

There really wasn't a need to buy our own scratch pads, Joe reasoned. Since virtually every other department had their own, why not just "borrow" a few of theirs when we were meeting with them?

Made sense to me. Besides, whatever suited Joe just tickled me to death.

So I passed that word back to Christine who in turn passed it on to her staff.

For all the past and present Star-Telegram executives and managers, you now know why you saw StarText memos and notes bearing "From the Desk of .... (fill in the blank)" circulating around the building.

But I have to admit Christine did Joe one better on the scratch pads. She came up with her own solution.

One day Christine popped her head in my office and said she was on the hunt for scrap printer paper. Sure, glad to help.

It turned out she had been gathering up printer paper from all over the building and arranging it oh-so-carefully in a very neat stack on a table. She then applied a thick layer of glue to one side. After it dried, she took it to the paper cutter and sliced it up into ... what else ... scratch pads.

Not necessarily part of her job description, but I had to marvel at her problem-solving skills!

And yes, StarText did become the only locally-run online service run by the newspaper to achieve profitability in the Eighties.

Discover StarText!

When StarText launched (May 3, 1982), we looked to our partner, Tandy, to trumpet the news via their dozens of Radio Shack locations throughout Tarrant County.

Pictured above is the flyer, possibly the only one still around, Tandy produced and distributed to promote StarText.

Note the wholesome family unit, happy, practically giddy, to get "The Next Step in News" at a lightning fast 300 baud.

Also worth noting was the colorful screen graphic. Of course in 1982 there was no graphical standard for PCs and graphics were never part of StarText at any point. This graphic was actually painstakingly assembled from ASCII characters by StarText Director Joe Donth.

Despite the flyer, word was slow to circulate. Several customers we sent to Radio Shack to learn more reported back the salesperson would respond, "StarText -- what's that?"

Japanese Mystery Solved

Taking a quick break from 1985's magical mystery tour ...

As previously blogged, StarText caught the attention of Japanese technology leaders early on. In fact, we had five different delegations make the trip from the Far East to Fort Worth to check us out.

Above is a copy of an interview with Joe Donth, StarText Director, published in Japan in 1985.

Thanks to -- who else -- a StarText subscriber (Seiichi Nomura, ID 7496), we were able to get a translated version.

It read:

Newspaper Service in Texas Starts Homebanking Service Using Videotex with Local Bank This Fall

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a newspaper published in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, starts Home-Banking service with InterFirst Bank of Fort Worth, starting this fall.

This is done using "StarText," a videotex service, in Dallas-Fort Worth Area, which started in May, 1982.

There are several home banking services already available in the U.S. such as Bank of America in California, Chemical Bank in New York. The most significant feature of the service using StarText is that it has the maximum 90-day floating period.

According to Mr. Joseph L. Donth, director in charge of StarText, a floating period from a few days to a week is common in the U.S. after the consumer makes payment by personal check. Consumers in the U.S. can still make purchases even though there is not sufficient fund in their banking accounts taking advantage of this system. However, since in most currently available home banking systems, a transaction is instantly processed at the same time the consumer makes payment, the above mentioned shopping has been impossible. He emphasized that now by introducing the "float," a service was possible that met the consumers need.

StarText offers various information services as well as electronic mail services and has 1,650 subscribers. No sign-up fee is collected and the monthly charge is $9.95 including up to 100 free E-mails. Beyond 100 mails, each mail is charged 10 cents. Since the telephone system in Texas is flat, the usage is very high.

Not to beat a dead horse, but we probably got more coverage in Japan than in the pages of the Star-Telegram. Go figure.

'Got a New Home Computer'?

Here we have one of StarText ads we ran in the Star-Telegram, no doubt in January.

Why? January was always a big month for StarText, especially in the early years, because so many people got home computers as Christmas presents. And any computer (as well as "dumb" terminal) that could connect to a modem was a candidate for StarText service.

Note also the line, "No time charges!"

Just about all our competitors -- CompuServe, The Source, Dow-Jones, etc. -- levied a charge for each minute you used the service, the dreaded "connect" fee. In Texas we enjoyed unlimited use of our local phone line for a flat monthly rate. As a result, you could use StarText as long as liked, whenever you liked.

As I recall, the average connect session was around 10 minutes, so there were usually no busy signals. Not to mention a busy signal meant your "newspaper" didn't get delivered. We couldn't have that.

Hello, StarText? Japan Calling

It was sometime in 1983 that I got a call from someone at the Technology Transfer Institute.

The woman who called explained there was a group of Japanese business leaders touring the U.S. who wanted to make a stop in Fort Worth to see StarText.

First, I wondered how they ever heard of us in Japan. Under Phil Meek's edict, no press releases had gone out. There had been mentions of us in trade publications, most notably Gary Arlen's videotex newsletter. But still, why would businessmen from Japan make a special trip to see our six-person operation in Cowtown?

It didn't exactly make sense but hey, it's their nickel. So we agreed on a date for their visit -- November 7.

As the day arrived, I had arranged for a terminal to be set up in a conference room. We brought in some extra chairs. I think we may have even put together a fact sheet and ran off some extra copies. Then we got the call from security -- our guests were in the lobby.

As I got there to retrieve them, I did a double take. Virtually filling the entire Star-Telegram lobby area were 25 or 30 Japanese businessmen, each with at least two cameras around their necks. None spoke English save for their guide and interpreter. We were going to need more chairs.

After we got the group settled, but before we started the demo, I just had to ask one question.

I wanted the interpreter to ask the group's leader, Kiyoshi Takahara, corporate advisor to the Mitsubishi Corporation, "Why have so many come so far to see our small online operation?"

His answer was one I'll never forget:

"Because we hear you are doing something right."

While we all felt the same way, hearing someone else say it, an important someone from a far-away country, gave us a whole new level of confidence.

In December I received a letter of gratitude from Mr. Takahara for their visit. It read in part:

"During our stay in the United States for two weeks, our party had a most interesting and rewarding experience at your place.

"Our purpose of understanding 'data base and videotex services in the United States' was fully answered by the excellent arrangement by you and your people.

"Especially, we were very much impressed by your Startext on November 7, because of its creative thinking and business-like concepts."

They weren't the last visitors from Japan that would come to see us. Three more delegations made the trip in the following months and years, as well as a delegation from Norway and numerous U.S. newspaper executives.

But I think I enjoyed our Japanese visitors the most. They always brought presents.

'News ... Hot Off Your Screen!'

"Extra, Extra, read all about it!"

This original sales flyer from Radio Shack touted the next step in news, which of course was StarText.

Sadly, Cowntown wasn't exactly clamoring for "hot off your screen" news in 1982. But by the same time the following year, they were starting to come around.