I hesitated to write about the passing of Marc Orchant: there are so many bloggers who knew him better than I did, and they are giving fine testimonials to his life. See, for example, James Kendrick’s post and look at the ton of comments on it.
But Marc has been a blessing to me, and I felt that I really had to say something about his passing.
Marc’s blog posts were always crammed full of useful information. But, more than that, he always wrote with class and always treated each subject in a manner exemplary of a perfect gentleman. Even when he criticized a software product, he did it in a professional manner.
But, he was also a “blogger’s blogger.” I don’t know how many small time bloggers, like me, he helped out, but it appears that the number was pretty large. One morning several months ago, I was surprised to wake up and find that he had posted a comment on one of my posts. Turns out that he took time from his busy schedule to offer several helpful comments on some of my posts. You can’t imagine how good that made me feel, to have such a world-class blogger taking the time to offer helpful comments.
Over the past several months, Marc and I exchanged a few emails and I always tried to “return the favor,” by sharing something with him that I thought would be helpful. But, of course, I always felt like I came up short in returning the favor.
Marc always took the time to help people. There have been a few “big time” bloggers I have written to, hoping they would link to one of my articles, but they never even had the decency to reply back. But, while I never asked Marc for a link, I did ask for help on a couple of questions, and his replies were (1) almost immediate and (2) top-notch, thoughtful, and helpful. I remember a couple of weeks ago sending him a private message via Twitter, and within five minutes he replied with all sorts of great help.
Clearly, Marc was not just a great blogger … he was a great man who also happened to blog. To call him a blogger is to do a sort of disservice, I suppose, because it puts too small of a label on such a fine man.
Marc was young … almost 9 years younger than me (he recently turned 50). It is hard to understand how such a fine man can be taken from us, taken from his family, at such a young age. I still struggle with how unfair it seems that Vickie passed away when she was only 53, and I struggle with “why the hell not me, instead of her?”
Some things in life are just beyond our understanding. But, we can all understand that we could go at any time, too. I only hope that when I do go, I can do so with knowing that I at least tried to learn from people like Marc, who tried so hard to make the world a better place.
God rest your soul, Marc.