Scott Sonnon
12-05-2003, 03:16 PM
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Vernon [mailto:ChuckieTechie@chuckietechie.com]
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 2:56 PM
Subject: Ron Dobrin – Dolfzine News Bulletin
Dolfzine’s Publisher, Ron Dobrin is dead. He died alone, depressed, and lonely, early Monday around 2:00 AM on December 1, 2003. Ron took his own life by jumping to his death from his apartment building in Manhattan. Ron was struggling, and in a losing battle with the workload of keeping Dolfzine on schedule, after his Editor, Rosemary Vernon died in early October. Ron was also deeply disturbed personally with the loss of Rosemary as a close friend and the person he cheerfully began and ended each day with while working on dolfzine. He deeply missed his Editor and friend. He had tried a new Editor and the experience had been a dismal failure at all levels. In recent weeks, he referred to the event bitterly in several conversations. He said repeated attempts to make friends with this person had all been met with harsh rejection. Where Rosemary had been all give, this person was all I want. This really had him down and hurt him personally.
Recently Ron’s ability to exercise, train, and simply go out for walks had been severely restricted by a serious foot puncture injury. This locker-room wound had simply refused to heal and become infected with one of those on-going hospital spread infections. All these things were mounting up on him. Add to that, the being alone and lonely in New York City, at the age of sixty-five. It must have been just too much for him. We lost him. I am not a writer like many of you, but I think this says it about as well as it can be said.
We have lost two people that could do the work of twenty and we will miss them from now on. Ron and Rosemary always thought of you, you’re readers, and the unique community or which we are a part. They always thought of others before they thought of themselves. This makes Ron’s suicide so hard to understand. The world will miss them. So will you that that knew them. We are going to have to live with that.
Vince helped me prepare this and it goes out to you under both our signatures. Vince and I will have more to say to the writers and patrons in later emails after we have had a chance to get our act together a bit on what to do. We have to talk to members of Ron’s family before doing anything with Dolfzine. We will get much more into thing at that time. I will explain my role in this at that time. I have always been silently connected with Dolfzine. It is with reluctance that I break that silence now.
Some of you are members of Supertraining and Weight’s Net. Will you please pass this on so they can post it to their list. That way it will get out to the rest of the fitness community around the world. I felt it best to come right out with how he died rather than let people speculate. It has been a year of tremendous loss when you consider we also lost Mel Siff in the early part of this year.
Please stop all contributions to dolfzine at this time. We have no way to deal with them. Until we decide and set a course for the future, it would not be right to accept your gifts in the name of the Dolfzine. We would also ask our patrons to stand fast and hold back on any quarterly or annual donations that they have in process. We will be returning checks that are in transit or are not yet deposited.
Dolfzine has been an active supporter of the Baldwin Hills Classic and the Muscle Beach Venice Championships in the Las Angeles area. We will try through personal efforts to maintain this support in the future for Figure Competitions, in the name of Dolfzine and Rosemary Vernon. That has always been done with separate funds, and not the contributions, and will continue to be done in that way as long as possible.
I would like at this time to thank all of you for your hard work and generous contribution of articles, month after month. It has literally been a labor of love for all of us. I also want to thank our patrons and contributors for keeping us afloat for as long as you did. We are where we are now due to the loss of our two most valuable humans. Vince and I will put things on hold for the moment while we look for ways to go on.
I have learned the one great glaring weakness of the online ezine. It is the deadline. I will write an obituary for Ron and, at last, an obituary for Rosemary. It will be prepared over the next few days to weeks. I am in no hurry. No more deadlines. I want all of you to understand that. It is the holiday season. I am a slow meticulous writer when I write anything at all. I have many commitments outside of Dolfzine this holiday season. The most important is Rosemary’s ninety-two year old mother. All of us are busy and should try to enjoy our holiday season. When the obituary is ready, I will try to load it up to the site. I hope the passwords I have are still good. They are several months old. That is how unprepared for this Vince and I were. The site is very secure. I made it that way in my role to Dolfzine as the technical person on the project. If Ron changed it before he died, I am going to have a very hard time getting into it. Right now, the site will simply remain up and in a static state.
Again thank you all. I am so sorry to have to bring you this news.
Jim Vernon & Vince McConnell
ChuckieTechie@chuckietechie.com
vince@etfitness.com
From: Jim Vernon [mailto:ChuckieTechie@chuckietechie.com]
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 2:56 PM
Subject: Ron Dobrin – Dolfzine News Bulletin
Dolfzine’s Publisher, Ron Dobrin is dead. He died alone, depressed, and lonely, early Monday around 2:00 AM on December 1, 2003. Ron took his own life by jumping to his death from his apartment building in Manhattan. Ron was struggling, and in a losing battle with the workload of keeping Dolfzine on schedule, after his Editor, Rosemary Vernon died in early October. Ron was also deeply disturbed personally with the loss of Rosemary as a close friend and the person he cheerfully began and ended each day with while working on dolfzine. He deeply missed his Editor and friend. He had tried a new Editor and the experience had been a dismal failure at all levels. In recent weeks, he referred to the event bitterly in several conversations. He said repeated attempts to make friends with this person had all been met with harsh rejection. Where Rosemary had been all give, this person was all I want. This really had him down and hurt him personally.
Recently Ron’s ability to exercise, train, and simply go out for walks had been severely restricted by a serious foot puncture injury. This locker-room wound had simply refused to heal and become infected with one of those on-going hospital spread infections. All these things were mounting up on him. Add to that, the being alone and lonely in New York City, at the age of sixty-five. It must have been just too much for him. We lost him. I am not a writer like many of you, but I think this says it about as well as it can be said.
We have lost two people that could do the work of twenty and we will miss them from now on. Ron and Rosemary always thought of you, you’re readers, and the unique community or which we are a part. They always thought of others before they thought of themselves. This makes Ron’s suicide so hard to understand. The world will miss them. So will you that that knew them. We are going to have to live with that.
Vince helped me prepare this and it goes out to you under both our signatures. Vince and I will have more to say to the writers and patrons in later emails after we have had a chance to get our act together a bit on what to do. We have to talk to members of Ron’s family before doing anything with Dolfzine. We will get much more into thing at that time. I will explain my role in this at that time. I have always been silently connected with Dolfzine. It is with reluctance that I break that silence now.
Some of you are members of Supertraining and Weight’s Net. Will you please pass this on so they can post it to their list. That way it will get out to the rest of the fitness community around the world. I felt it best to come right out with how he died rather than let people speculate. It has been a year of tremendous loss when you consider we also lost Mel Siff in the early part of this year.
Please stop all contributions to dolfzine at this time. We have no way to deal with them. Until we decide and set a course for the future, it would not be right to accept your gifts in the name of the Dolfzine. We would also ask our patrons to stand fast and hold back on any quarterly or annual donations that they have in process. We will be returning checks that are in transit or are not yet deposited.
Dolfzine has been an active supporter of the Baldwin Hills Classic and the Muscle Beach Venice Championships in the Las Angeles area. We will try through personal efforts to maintain this support in the future for Figure Competitions, in the name of Dolfzine and Rosemary Vernon. That has always been done with separate funds, and not the contributions, and will continue to be done in that way as long as possible.
I would like at this time to thank all of you for your hard work and generous contribution of articles, month after month. It has literally been a labor of love for all of us. I also want to thank our patrons and contributors for keeping us afloat for as long as you did. We are where we are now due to the loss of our two most valuable humans. Vince and I will put things on hold for the moment while we look for ways to go on.
I have learned the one great glaring weakness of the online ezine. It is the deadline. I will write an obituary for Ron and, at last, an obituary for Rosemary. It will be prepared over the next few days to weeks. I am in no hurry. No more deadlines. I want all of you to understand that. It is the holiday season. I am a slow meticulous writer when I write anything at all. I have many commitments outside of Dolfzine this holiday season. The most important is Rosemary’s ninety-two year old mother. All of us are busy and should try to enjoy our holiday season. When the obituary is ready, I will try to load it up to the site. I hope the passwords I have are still good. They are several months old. That is how unprepared for this Vince and I were. The site is very secure. I made it that way in my role to Dolfzine as the technical person on the project. If Ron changed it before he died, I am going to have a very hard time getting into it. Right now, the site will simply remain up and in a static state.
Again thank you all. I am so sorry to have to bring you this news.
Jim Vernon & Vince McConnell
ChuckieTechie@chuckietechie.com
vince@etfitness.com