🚀 go-pugleaf

Last Friday 02/20/04, I was reading the Mercury and came across a small 
story on page three of the local section. It said that a body with a 
bullet in it had washed up on the beach at Half Moon Bay. The body was 
that of a fifty-year-old man, identified as Henry Mollenauer. The case 
is being investigated as a suicide, according to coroner .

"'Henry'?" I thought. "That can't be Hank Mollenauer, could it?"

Well, in today's Merc, Hank's obituary appeared. I still can't belive 
it. Are their any other people in these groups who remember Hank? In 
the early nineties, before ubiquitous Internet access, Hank 
administered one of the most expansive bulletin board services catering 
to the Mac in the South Bay Area. 

Hank named his BBS "Iguana". It started out as a CLUI board, then 
eventually moved to the First Class Client/Server interface. For many 
Macintosh people, Iguana became practically a utility, a local AOL 
almost. Hank expanded his board by adding an unheard-of *eight* 
telephone lines to his Sunnyvale apartment. Plus, he provided mail hop 
from BBS to BBS. You could send email all the way around the world like 
that. He didn't make any money off it. He told me it was a labor of 
love and a great hobby.

That was how I got to know him, and gained an interest in computer 
communications. Iguana was a clean board (no adult content) and Hank 
tended to act as a moderator when it seemed to him that things were 
getting out of hand. I had pizza with him and other Iguana fans several 
times. He struck me as a highly intelligent guy, generous in both time 
and spirit. He introduced many of us to the Internet through his 
decision to gateway Iguana to Usenet. Hank would add groups per user 
request. I learned how to use email to access information on remote 
computers thanks to Hank and Iguana. 

The World Wide Web was the death of many local BBSes, and Iguana was 
among them. I still remember grieving when he told everyone that he was 
shutting it down. But it wasn't too bad, because he started a company 
the would provide Internet service to his former Iguana users for 
twenty bucks a month. And that was how I first hooked up to the 
Internet, through Hank's company, Access Internet Communications or 
AIC. 

I went to see him at his new AIC offices and he let me use the big pipe 
to surf the web. So typical of him. Then, although I kept AIC's service 
for years, I gradually lost track of Hank and all the other Iguana 
users I'd gotten to know. I just figured that with the boom, everyone 
was doing great. I considered Hank and people like him (including Steve 
Case) to be the biggest promoters of the Internet we use today. 

How could it have gone so wrong?

I'd seen it before with the demise of another South Bay First Class BBS, 
"Attitude Problem", yet another heartbreaker of a tragedy that wound up 
taking the life of another kind of great man.

Anyway, according to the obit, there will be a memorial tomorrow, Friday 
2/27/04 hosted by family and friends at Michaels at Shoreline, 2960 N. 
Shorline Blvd. in Mt View. Kathy Mollenauer, Hank's wife, requests that 
remembrances be made in the form of donation to the Yosemite 
Preservation Fund, a non-profit preservation group. 

Does anyone have any clue why this happened?