Silent Key

Gabe A. Sellers III passed away from natural causes, in his home in Northglenn, Colorado on March 21, 2011. He was 61. Gabe was born June 4, 1949 in Summit, New Jersey to Gabe and Marie Sellers. He was raised in Summit, and went on to earn his BSEE at Virginia Tech (then known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute), and his MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California-Berkeley. He served two years in the US Army, 1972-1974, aiding students in the computer lab at the U. S. Military Academy.

Gabe's siblings provided the following:

Gabe worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories (later to become Alcatel-Lucent) for 29 years. Gabe had many different projects during his career. One of those projects was developing data communication modules that allowed terminals to connect to mainframe computers some significant distance away. These data modules were used by applications that later evolved to using Internet for connections. Gabe retired in 2001.

Gabe was a licensed amateur radio operator, and he collected old vacuum tube radios whenever he had a chance. Gabe was often seen at swap fests with an acquired old radio under his arm. Gabe was a co-founding member of a club dedicated to low power amateur radio operation, the Colorado QRP Club.

He was known for his thrice weekly jogs around his Northglenn neighborhood, having done it for many years. He was proud that he jogged over 60,000 miles during his lifetime. He fought a good fight, for 32 years, against diabetes.

Gabe was a kind man, and a unique and brilliant man. He was our brother, known to immediate family as Buddy. He was predeceased by his parents. He was loved, and will be missed by his brother Bill Sellers (wife Ginny), and his sister Barbara Meredith (husband Bill); and nephews Luke and Doug, and nieces Rebekah and Amy. The family chose to have Gabe cremated, and to forego a service. Please be assured that it is a great comfort for us to know that Gabe had caring friends, neighbors and acquaintances, and we regret that we cannot meet you all in person. Please feel free to contact us.

Barbara Meredith at snj2bsm@mchsi.com

Here's what we posted during that sad time when we learned of Gabe's passing:

Gabe Sellers
W2ZGB, Silent Key

Our friend and Colorado QRP Club founding member, Gabe Sellers (W2ZGB, formerly KGØNR), CQC # 012, passed away at his home, from natural causes, on March 21, 2011. Gabe is survived by loving siblings and other family around the country. Some of the condolences CQC has been receiving are at the bottom of this page. Additional information about Gabe will be posted as it becomes available...

Your humble webmaster/treasurer had the distinct pleasure of meeting privately with Gabe during our club's March 11th meeting. At that time Gabe thought it might be of interest for us to post some pix and text from his experience at West Point during the Vietnam War. I agreed, and feel a small amount of luck in that I was able to post Gabe's pictures and descriptions almost a week before his passing. Here's how the piece was originally posted on our Members on the Move page - WBØJNR

W2ZGB - Gabe Sellers,
CQC # 12 at West Point!

Roger,

For the first time in 35 years I pulled out my big cardboard box of army stuff. The first picture is of the Instruction Support Division (ISD). I am in the top row wearing a gold coat. Only those in the Instructor Group wore gold coats; in fact we were known as "The Gold Coats". We were the computer hot-shots. That is so the Cadets knew who to go to in the computer center when they had a problem; they went to a "Gold Coat". No officer wore a gold coat.

Not bad for a draftee.

The second picture I barely remember. I don't know what the occasion was and I don't know who is standing next to me. I do know he wasn't in the Instructor Group. The guy on the right side of the picture is the only other draftee that I know of at West Point. He was in the Instructor Group though I don't know why he wasn't in the first picture. The officer is Colonel Luebbert, the head of the Instruction Support Division. Since he was permanently assigned to West Point, he couldn't rise above the rank of Colonel. He was an interesting combination of hard-assed Colonel and absent minded professor. He was nothing but nice to us. Because of the quality of the people in the Instructor Group, he knew he had a good thing. To me, the guys in the Instructor Group were some of the smartest people I've ever met. Colonel Luebbert did wear a gold coat a few times because of the prestige (In this organization, computer prestige flowed up, not down.), at the same time hoping no one would ask him a computer program question.

As an electrical engineer, my computer programming background was weak. I found out after I got there that the thing that had most impressed Colonel Luebbert about me was the fact that I was from Bell Labs. Actually, I was drafted so fast out of college that when I showed up at West Point, I had spent more time in Basic Training (a totally miserable experience) than I had spent at Bell Labs. It was my engineering background that made me especially valuable there. The programming expertise came from on the job experience.

The third picture is a cropped version of the second picture. That was my friend's idea.

I don't remember who took the last picture of me on football game detail. This detail came from Headquarters Company, not ISD. On half of the home football games we had to help the MP's direct traffic in the parking lots. That is when this picture was taken. On the other half of the football games we had to wear civilian clothes and take tickets at the football stadium. That was the preferred detail because once the game started, we could leave. The year I was doing this is the first year in West Point history that the football team lost every game of the season.

I didn't know it then, but the next football season I would be at Berkeley. I didn't even know Berkeley had a football team because it is called 'California', not 'Berkeley'. That season, the West Point football team came to Berkeley to play them in football. I thought it was nice of them to come all the way across the country to play a football game for me, so I went to the game. In a mostly empty stadium, West Point lost again. It is interesting that I've only ever attended one Berkeley football game and one West Point football game, and it was the same game. I haven't attended any football games since. CU played 'California' at Berkeley last fall. They also lost.

General David Petraeus was a cadet at West Point (class of '74) while I was there. I don't know if I ever met him or worked with him on a computer problem, but if he remembers the computer center from back then, then he would remember the Gold Coats. We were that prominent there. Other cadets were General Raymond Odierno (class of '76) the current Commanding General, Multi-National Force - Iraq, and General Stanley McChrystal (class of '76) the (former) Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. They were all cadets at West Point when these pictures were taken.

The final Certificate of Achievement was sent to me after I left the army. It showed up in the mail when I was at Berkeley, and it surprised the heck out of me. I didn't know they even did such things. My first thought when reading it was 'I did way more than this', but then I realized there was no room to write more on the Certificate. I thought it was nice that the Superintendent of West Point signed it. Yes, I did meet him when he took a tour of the computer center and I gave him a little talk about our computer graphics and what we did.

Of all the draftees sent to West Point that I know of, I was half of them.

Gabe

Condolences

• Hi, Roger,

  Thank you for passing along the sad news about Gabe. I, along with everyone else, always enjoyed getting together with him at our club meetings and the Chat and Chew gatherings, when he attended. He knew so much about radios and a lot more, and was always willing to share it with us. I am sure that I am among the many in the club, and elsewhere, who will miss him very much. Our meetings won't be quite the same without his presence and insightful comments and questions.

  Pete, NO2D.

 

• Dear amigo Roger

  Just read your posting to the QRP/L list... I was very sorry to learn about the passing of amigo Gabe W2ZGB... Please pass along my condolences to the family and also to the CQC Club members with whom I had the unique in a lifetime experience of sharing the Annual Banquet where I was honored to be the guest speaker.

  72 and DX
  From your friend in Havana
  Arnie Coro
  CO2KK

 

• Very sad about this.

  Gabe made point of attending every club function. His home was a museum. He was always among the first in line at hamfests. His questions at meetings, especially during presentations, always added an unexpected and new insight into the topic at hand.

  Dick AB0CD..

 

• To all the members of the QRP Club:

  I was so glad to see that you had posted of Gabe Sellers' passing. I had been his barber for almost 33 years, every four weeks he came to wherever I was to get his haircut. Even when I held other jobs, Gabe insisted that I cut his hair in my home, his or somewhere else convenient. It was almost always at 9:00 on Saturday mornings; a week ago this past Saturday when I came to the shop I work in now to see him for yet another haircut (it was a usually quite a pleasant experience, Gabe and I were very different but he was always willing to listen to my side of an issue), he hadn't shown up by 9:10. He had never not shown up, I knew he had my phone number, he would have called if he was able to. When I came home to call his number, fearing that living alone as a diabetic had caused problems, his brother answered the phone and informed me that he had died about two weeks earlier.

  I am certain he thought I was over reacting to the news, I was just his barber. We had become good friends over the years, he watched my daughter, now almost 24, grow up. She was very upset to learn of his passing also. I know he enjoyed QRP immensely, he brought a print out of the article written about him and the amount of running he did. We did sometimes have to work around your swaps for our appointments. He'd been buying a surprising amount of equipment online.

  Again, I share your sadness at Gabe's passing. I know he looked forward always to your meetings and swaps.

  Very sincerely,

  Cheryl K. Glenn

 

 

The W2ZGB Estate Sale  (Took place on Saturday, July 23rd, 2011)

Immediately below are some photographs that were taken at the W2ZGB estate sale on July 23rd, 2011. Although Gabe's passing was unexpected and sad for us we found the gathering for his estate sale to be a good time to reflect, reminisce, and even relax. Gabe will be missed but we're grateful to have had what time we could with him both as a club member, friend, neighbor, and family member. Click Here for a YouTube video from a small portion of the sale... Note: Each sale, no matter how small, qualified the buyer for one old "lunchbox" style CB radio and one CB walkie-talkie! You can see the kids holding walkie-talkies in photo #6 and a neat stack of CB transceivers near Gabe's club jacket in the last photo (# 15)... Your humble webmaster originally posted these estate sale photos at the top of "Gabe's page" a few weeks around the time of the event. They've since been moved to this location for archival purposes as the sale, itself, brought back so many great memories of Gabe and his support of our club!

Click on any of these "thumbnail" images for a larger view:

1. Jim & Dick	2. Bill, Jim & Roger	3. Antenna purchase	4. Heathkits galore!	5. Jim & space radios
6. Free walkie-talkies!	7. Technical reading	8. Jim & Sam	9. Jim daydreaming...	10. Vince & Judy
11. Young buyer	12. Jim & Dick	13. Vince	14. Lots of stuff!	15. Gabe's CQC jacket

 

 

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Roger J. Wendell, WBØJNR

 

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