Big Sky Blog

Way back when, in the earlier days of the blogosphere, the much-smaller and tighter-knit community of Big Sky Bloggers semi-adopted a fellow blogger from Savannah, Georgia: Sam Johnson. As far as I know, he remains the only person that has been unofficially named as an Honorary Big Sky Blogger. He even sponsored a contest for people to vote on the first-ever “Miss RSJS Show” (The Miss ‘Real Sam Johnson Show’). Two of our fellow Big Sky Bloggers – Pandora and Karbon Kounty Moos – made the final five!

There was just something special about him: his perpetual upbeat nature, his passion for retro-TV and comics, his love and knowledge of awesome music, and his just overall good-guy-ness. Unfortunately, he was also battling some health problems – he received dialysis regularly and was waiting for organ transplant surgery – but it just never really occurred to me that Sam would ever not be here.

But sadly, I received word today from Randy that Sam has indeed left us, at the far-too early age of only 42. I wish that we had the opportunity to meet in real life – when I spoke with him a couple of years ago on Christmas Day, when he was doing his on-air deejay stuff down in Savannah, we even talked about him coming up to visit his Montana blogger fan club.

The blogosphere and the world just lost a super guy.

I was scrolling through some of Sam’s archives and stumbled across his entry from Christmas 2005, when I surprised him with a holiday call. He titled the entry “When Titans Meet!” and here’s a bit of it:

As you remember, I left the phone numbers to the station here so anyone who wanted to call me today could, as I all I wanted was to hear some friendly voices today. I got one in the form of David from Better Living Thru Blogging! I gotta tell ya, I was surprized that anyone called me and I’m glad that he did. After the bad day I was having…he cheered me up just by telling me “Merry Christmas” which was something no one else had done since I had been on the air all day. I’m glad to finally talk to you. Thank you once again for making me an Official Montanian (Montanan? I forget. Sorry). If it’s okay with you, I’ll make you a Official Savannaian.