Nathan T Freeman RIP
I am absolutely rocked by the loss of Nathan T Freeman. Words can’t express what a loss this is.
Nathan and I had a complex relationship. In some ways, we were best friends at times. We would talk about everything, but mostly games and anything not work. We would talk family.
Nathan I met because of OpenNTF.
needed a place for the server (besides under his desk at Sharp). I offered for PSC to host it. Then we had the open source licensing shit and I was knee deep in convos with him about the right thing to do. When the original board agreed to use both, he and I went rounds. and rounds. But it built a good friendship foundation.
When it came to the N/D community, he and I would often team up and tag team Brent Peters and/or Russ Holden and talk about wild things we wanted from the product. I remember the first time Philippe Riand did that workshop with Peter Janzen in Westford on XPages. Pete was getting pissed at the two of us cause we were ignoring the workbook and doing our own thing. Nathan was being a jerk about something, and I challenged him put up or shut up — and he (well, a little me too) built that first xpages view to do a join with the super hero database and ran it in the really brittle alpha of XPiNC. That afternoon, Brent took Nathan and I back to his office and we talked OpenNTF and the product. After the group dinner, we got a bottle of tequila and vodka and drank straight from the bottles in the parking lot of the Westford offices. Why? Nathan wanted to be close to the mothership while we plotted to take over the universe. Or how to convince Russ to do a major overhaul of views and indexes. The next morning was super rough but man, I won’t ever forget that.
Nathan also setup an evening in my life I won’t ever forget. He got me into Crystal Method and in the VIP room at House of Blues in Chicago. He knew both of them and after the show, I talked with the guys about Nathan. I then saw some of the most wild shit I had ever seen. Pure rock star stuff. I didn’t stay long, it wasn’t my jam. But Nathan made that night happen.
He was the guy who I had breakfast in Atlanta on the trip of driving my Dad’s stuff up in a truck from Orlando to Chicago. He found time to have breakfast with us and his daughter. I can remember watching how amazing a father he was. He so loved his kids — they were the world to him.
I remember getting drunk on skype with him a few nights after Tim died. We talked about mortality and what we had to live for. I cried so much that night with him. I think Tim’s loss rocked Nathan to his core.
Nathan and I had drifted apart since his move to Mexico, mostly because we had a hard time not talking politics. I think the last time I saw him was ConnectED at the Hilton in 2016. I remember leaving to head to Disney and he came over and gave me a hug. It was the last time we did that. One of the last times we talked was when he heard about my divorce. He pinged me and we talked for a long time that night.
I logged into (old school, original) skype for the first time in about 9 months today. That is how we talked. Nathan isn’t online. He won’t be ever again. I will miss my friend. I am going to light a candle at church today for him. I know he would roll his eyes at me, because he didn’t believe in that. But I know he is smiling, because this is what I need to do to say goodbye.
Nathan — Love you. Your friend, John
