Tribute to Doug Salem - R.I.P.

[Wild Orchid*]

I Googled “Doug Salem” and at the top was “Doug Salem RIP."  Surprisingly, it was not about Doug’s early death.  No, it was an acrimonious attack on Doug, accusing him of behavior opposite of what Dan and others say about Doug based on personal knowledge.

It is very sad news but those words were posted 4 YEARS ago....
Don't you look at the dates?

[Admin]

It is very sad news but those words were posted 4 YEARS ago....
Don't you look at the dates?

To clarify:

* The page which Gator found was from a person who had a disagreement with Doug - yes, 4 years ago.
* When Doug (apparently) decided to withdraw from the disagreement, that person made several callous comments, including using the "R.I.P." (Rest In Peace) acronym to mock Doug's withdrawal.
* Now, with Doug's passing 4 years later, to review those callous comments that were made in the heat of a disagreement, it is very sad indeed.

I think the point Gator was making is - there is very little, if anything, in the internet space that should motivate us to write hateful and callous comments about someone else.

Just my take on things.

- Dan

[Gator]

Exactly (and to start anything in a tribute thread other than a tribute.....).

[Ronnie]

Has anyone yet learned how Doug died?  How is Olga doing?

[Markus]

It's sad to learn about Doug. I send my condolences to Olga. Doug was a person
who had a way of turning words into interesting thoughts. He had a passion to
help people with his experiences. Doug didn't seem to go overboard with his opinions.
He communicated in a diplomatic way. I think even those people who disagreed
with him would say he had a way about him that led one to like him. Even though
I'm late in learning this, I pray that God will comfort Olga and their daughter during
this time and the future.

Mark

[AnastassiaAsh]

I haven't heard from Olga since i sent my email to her to those three addresses. I am not sure what is happening to her and her little girl and where they are. 

[Markus]

AnastassiaAsh,

Thanks for the update. I Hope that she has some friends who will help her through this.
I don't know her, but think about what she is going through.

I have told my wife about certain things in case I pass away, and I think it's important for
each man who has a RW wife to prepare his wife.  My wife puts a lot of trust into me to take care
of things. But, I still try to communicate to her about the finances in case something like this
happens to me. It's very important for a man to think about his wife in this situation.

I do hope that somebody is helping Olga.

Mark

[Ronnie]

I have a feeling she may have left the U.S..nobody seems to be able to reach her.

[Shrek]

I knew Doug well for the last 10 years of his life. I also knew Olga through Doug, first at their Chino Hills, California home shortly after they were married, again while they were traveling in Central California on a vacation before the birth of their daughter and visited my home (for me to 'baby sit' their dog, Shadow, over night while they enjoyed their nearby hotel room alone), and then shortly after they had moved to their Folsom, California, house where I also met their lovely daughter Lana, who was about one year old at the time.
My understanding is that Doug apparently suffered a heart attack alone in his hotel room while on a business trip to Tucson for his company in January. I tried to contact Olga by email shortly after learning of Doug's death but received no response.
Although I searched for an online obituary for Doug, I found none. For what it's worth, this is Douglas George Salem's obituary as I know it:
Doug was the son of a career Air Force man and his wife and spent significant time in Japan during his formative years. His family (aside from his parents, Doug also has at least one brother, although I've not met any of them) returned stateside to Southern California There Doug took up surfing as a teenager.
After graduation from high school Doug knocked around a few menial jobs, choosing not to go to college immediately, and eventually got an entry-level mailroom-type job with a missile contractor. His aptitude for the English language led to his being offered a promotion to help put proposals together for the firm. That started his proposal career which he stayed with until his untimely end.
Doug progressed in proposals and moved to Florida to pursue missile contracts with the firm. There, he met his first wife. While that marriage was happy at first Doug told me that he eventually discovered his wife was having an affair with his best friend, so they divorced. That threw Doug into an emotional tailspin where he lost his job, surfed in Florida for a while and wound up, haggard and despondent, back in Southern California close to his parents and brother. Pulling himself out of his depression, Doug started looking for proposal work again and was hired by Northrop. There, he worked on that firm's successful proposal to build the B-2 stealth bomber.
Doug left Northrop and moved to Sacramento doing proposals for Kleinfelder, a civil engineering firm, and an Inupiat-owned military services contractor, ACCI. He left those firms and briefly did freelance proposal work, including Granite Construction, a heavy civil contractor headquartered in Watsonville, until 1997 when he joined Arctic Slope World Services (ASWS), a defense contractor reconstituted by the same  Alaskan native-owned Inupiats that owned ACCI.
As proposal manager for ASWS Doug hired and formed a proposal group consisting of another proposal manager, two proposal coordinators, and a graphic artist to produce proposals for military aircraft fueling and maintenance services, as well as military base operating services contracts. I was one of the proposal coordinators Doug hired and his gift for teaching was evidence by the proposal training that he provided me. His dry wit and patient insistence for producing the best possible product was apparent.
Doug left ASWS after about a year. Two issues arose in his departure. First, in 1998 Doug went through personal emotional upheaval when a medical internist ended their two+-year relationship that resulted in his frequently missing work and becoming detached from day-to-day office concerns. Second, the firm was disappointed that it was not winning new work and, in fact, was losing contracts it thought were secure. Higher management blamed Doug for that and terminated him.
Doug moved back to Southern California, took up proposal freelance work and determined that he wanted to find someone to fall in love with and marry. Doug made an internet search and stumbled upon several sites offering meetings with eligible Russian and Ukrainian women. On one of those sites he found Olga's profile and started corresponding with her. Their relationship bloomed.
Shortly afterward, Doug was hired as a business development manager for Parsons Corp. in Pasadena. While with Parsons, Doug had the opportunity to travel to Russia on business. He combined that with vacation time to travel to the Ukraine to meet Olga, her family, and court her. He arranged for her visa to the US and they were married in a small ceremony in Las Vegas.
The couple bought a house in Chino Hills and they settled in as a couple, with Doug teaching Olga how to drive in Parsons' Pasadena parking lot and encouraging her to return to school to improve her English.
Doug left Parsons and concentrated on freelance proposal work to pay the mortgage and Olga's community college tuition. After about a year of that I contacted Doug offering him freelance proposal work with Granite Construction. Doug had referred me to Granite for a proposal job shortly after ASWS closed its office in Sacramento. I kept in touch with Doug, respected skills and found a way to repay my gratitude for his referral on the Granite job.
Doug performed the freelance work well and I offered Doug a full-time job with Granite. In deciding to accept that job Doug noted that it was time to settle into a position and concentrate on his family. They sold their Chino Hills home and bought a home in Folsom to be close to his new job for Granite in Davis.
Proposals are a very small world. Now I was in a position where I was Doug's boss. Knowing Doug and his headstrong ways, I came from Watsonville to Granite's Davis office to visit Doug shortly after he started his new job. I wanted  to make sure he had no qualms about the new situation. He repeatedly said that he was comfortable with the arrangement, wanted latitude to "do his own thing" with the Davis office and we enjoyed dinner afterwards with Olga and Lana in their Folsom home.
Things soon proved that Doug was happiest doing his own thing and our relationship deteriorated. I learned that draconian measures were taken by Doug that led to my departure from Granite within two years of his hire. It was a sad way to leave a friend. I hope Doug before he died forgave me whatever perceived ills I did to him just as I forgave him of any offense on me.
Two things summed up Doug's life - his family and proposals. The day Doug's body was discovered in his Tucson hotel room I received a call from a former fellow worker at Granite with the news. I was told that Doug was under a lot of pressure having to complete three separate proposals within a very short time and it was speculated that pressure might have led to his death. Ironically, I was working on a competitor's proposal for one of the three proposals Doug was working on when I received word of Doug's death.
The cause of Doug's passing was pure speculation. However, it's an object lesson for us all to remember to keep things that are most important at the forefront and let secondary things fall to the side if they interfere with the things we hold most dear.
Doug Salem, I'm a better man for having known you. May those left behind find comfort in your memory.

[Ronnie]

Thank you, Shrek. Your account of Doug's life was well done.  I didn't know him but now it seems I do.  Thanks again.

Thank you, Markus for you comment about men married to RW need to be prepared.  I have on my to do list, to write up a full checklist of what to do in the event of my sudden and unexpected demise.

Gentlemen, I think most of us don't really realize how much our wives depend on us and how initiated they are in such things that need to be done after a spouse's death. 

Here are some of things that will be on my checklist that I am now committed to do before I turn sixty later this month:

*If you don't have life insurance, buy it! Get a term policy for 10 times your annual income.

*Make arrangements for where you wish to be buried..buy a plot.  If you don't have a family plot remember, the location is not about you, it about those who want to visit your grave from time to time so make it a convenient location.  If you're a military veteran, a plot can be made available to you at any of the national cemeteries at no charge.
Decide that before hand and who will prepare the body and what container you want.  Loved ones tend to feel cheap and unloving if they don't buy the best coffin.  Make that decision yourself so as to remove the burden.

*Prepare an announcement to go out via email to family friends and business clients.  Ask someone to email the announcement when the time comes and ask your wife to contact that person right away.  Put that person's name and phone number on your checklist

*If you have any non-joint accounts, investment, IRA, Bank.  Make a list of the institutions and account numbers and phone numbers to call.

*Train your wife how to pay bills online if that's what you're doing.  Show her the passwords and have her do it to be familiar or write out step-by-step instructions.

*Write how to contact the car insurance companies as well as home and boat.  Also how to contact the mortgage company or landlord.

*Write a will or codicile to dispose of anything your wife would have no use for but might be wanted by other family members or friends.

*If someone owes you money, make a list of who and what amount and keep it updated so your wife can continue to collect it.

*Write your own obituary and write on your wife's checklist how to send it to the newpaper.

*Get familiar with you wife's survivor benefits with social security and write down who and how to contact the Social Security Administration.

*Talk to your wife about her living situation after you're gone.  Will she want to move to a smaller home..another city or state or country?

She will probably not want to talk about it, knowing their superstitious nature, but she should also under how important it is not to ignore the realities of life and, in particular, death.

Guys please add to this list anything I may have overlooked.. I just did this from the top of my head at midnight, so surely I've missed stuff.

Oh, and most important..Let her know where she can find you later on.. either  :evil: or  :angel:


 

[SteveInTennessee]

All,

I only found out today about Doug's death. I was stunned and saddened. I was cleaning up my email inbox and found an email from Doug from early Jan '08 talking about proposal work. Doug and I became friends in Northern VA (1992) when he was working with American Operations Corporation. He left AOC and moved to Sacramento to work for ACCI and then Klinefelder. We worked at ACCI together for a couple of years. Doug came to south Florida and stayed with me in 1998 (he even left a surf board at my place in the event he came back to south Florida). In 1999/2000 Doug and I were roommates in Santa Barbara working on the Antarctica proposal for Tetra Tech. Doug taught me how to surf (I wasn't very good, but he was) and we spent time in Arroyo Grande with his parents, and bar hopped in SLO and Pismo Beach, where he talked me out of getting a tattoo. After that, Doug went to Pasadena to work for Parson's and we would talk every few months. Doug was a very good man. He was completely dedicated to his family and had an incredible work ethic. Every email from Doug for the past 3 years talked about Olga and Lana. We hadn't spoken in 7 months (thanks to the proposal business and multiple deadlines) and for that I am very regretful. He will be missed by many people. I have many fond memories of the man, and hope that one day I am fortunate enough to share some of the tamer ones with Lana so that she will know how special her father was. To Olga, Lana, Doug's mother and brother's, and the many people who knew Doug, my deepest condolences.

[Rvrwind]

I learned of Dougs passing from our mutual friend Wesley Spence some time back. It was a shocker & gives one pause to consider their own mortality.
He will be missed by his family & those he befriended.
Good Journey Doug, wherever it takes you....

[barry]

I never knew Doug and Olga well, but we met for lunch in Santa Monica with other AM/RW couples several years ago.  I sat next to Doug and I enjoyed his company and stories about his adventures, including those with Olga.  Although we never became close friends I feel a void knowing that he is with us only in spirit.