I get anywhere from three to fifteen pieces of DPS-related E-mail a day. The vast majority of the E-mail contains suggestions on who to add to DPS. I probably add about half of the suggestions I get.
Most E-mail is pretty positive. While DPS does offend some people, it's mostly meant for trivia. I got more hate mail when I ran a women's political Web site, implying that women using their poitical power is somehow more offensive than death. ;-> Usually, I ignore the name-calling mail, but I couldn't resist replying to one person.
Anyway, I thought I'd share an occasional letter with you.
12/05
I find your website informative and a great teaching tool. I teach high school to students who; but for my interjection of this macabre subject matter; would never know the passing of great personages that I have enjoyed in my lifetime. I have a "wall of remembrance" that is put up every semester. From the first day of school till the last day of finals for each semester, an 8X 10 of every deceased listed in your site and some not listed goes up on the wall. I build a mosaic of faces and every day one or two students per class exclaim "Who's dead today Mr. Farhie?". We then have a short recap of the days dead and go on from there. There are a few students and faculty that comment negatively on the subject matter, but on the whole, it is well recieved. At the end of each semester, the wall is photographed in a panoramic fashion to commit it to permanence, and the pictures are taken down, if a bit irreverantly and committed to the recycle bin (sort of a digital ashes to ashes dust to dust sort of thing) Those who succumb over the summer are saved for the fall of the next school year and those who die over the winter break are going up the minute I get back to the classroom on January 4.
This all started when I put up small images of most of those killed by the 9-11 terror attacks outside my classroom on a large wall. It remained up for several semesters till someone in administration said enough was enough, and that it was causing traffic jams outside my room. It came down and I carried on the custom inside the classroom. I even have students come in to see the wall that I don't even teach.
Anyway, I thought you'd like to know how helpful your site is in my endeavor to keep my students informed about the passing of important people from our generation, now forever lost to thiers but for a few pictures, films and recordings.
Respectfully,
David Farhie
1/99
Morbid, but cheerful. like an emergency waiting room, or the receptionist's desk at a funeral home.
1/99
A wonderful website that fills a much-needed gap, because most other sites don't definitively tell us if someone is still alive. I check it regularly to see who's still with us and who's gone; probably my favorite site on the web, and always up-to-date.
This was a particularly enthusiastic letter, and it really did make my day:
Your compilation of alive/dead celebrities is one of a kind... some of the comments on there are hysterical, two that come to mind are all of the "alleged"'s on William Shatner, and the "Dy-no-mite" on Jimmie Walker... hilarious... anyway, I actually learned of a few who had passed on that I either was not aware of or had forgotten about - Brad Davis from Midnight Express (classic flic, I was shocked to hear about him), Dinah Shore, Vic Tayback (wasn't he Mel from the diner?), and Alexander Gudonov, who I remembered as one of the bad guys from Die Hard, didn't know he was famous for anything else... anyway, keep updating it like you probably do regularly (saw you had Chris Farley and Katie Couric's husband, so you must keep it pretty recent), and I know I for one will browse through it every couple of months... keep up the good work, and keep the smart ass comments comin' - "alive, you hockey puck.. Don Rickles", and "Elvis sightings just aren't funny anymore"... LMAO