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In Memory of Lee Nelson

Lee with Hooper Dunbar

Lee Nelson created a program called Explore!
The web pages you see here are patterned after his work.
This page is dedicated to his memory.
Lee lived in Dana Point.
He was 44 years old at the time of his passing.

The following paragraphs are written by different people.

HIS EARLY YEARS

From a very early age, Lee Nelson was a person in search of truth and knowledge. He read books and did mathematical problems that were very advanced for a boy his age. He and his brother used to play a very intricate word game that was played with five letter words. It was the only game which Lee could not play entirely from memory, but for which he needed paper and pencil. The word "ABACK" was the the standard opening move of the game. Lee's brother, Jim Nelson, chose to bring up that word at his memorial service because it was a word that had special significance to them both. There are two meanings that it may have depending on how it is punctuated:

A Boy Always, Chasing Knowledge OR A Boy, Always Chasing Knowledge

It is written on the marker at his grave. Either way it is punctuated - it describes Lee.

EDUCATION AND MEMORY

Lee had a Masters of Phenomenological Psychology and was always interested in the brain and memory. Lee had a great capacity for memorization: when I first met him, he greatly impressed me by reciting the Tablet of the True Seeker! He was a very serious student of the Writings and wanted to help people with memorization. He conducted memorization classes, which provided a means for him to become familiar with people's processes. Later he created a computer program, which provided prompts for the memorizer. He was extremely creative!

NOTEBOOKS AND COMPUTERS

Lee Nelson loved keeping his thoughts, ideas and visions written in notebooks and had many of them around at any given time. He frequently tried more technically advanced modes of keeping these thoughts jotted down, but he always returned to the tried and true notebook.

WORKING FOR HIRE WORKING FOR LOVE

There was a time in Lee's life when he did software work as a consultant for other companies. He did this type of work so that he could support a family. Later, when the time was right, he left that type of work behind him and worked only on Baha'i projects. It was at this time that Lee was happiest.

Towards the end of his life, Lee was totally dedicated to working on software projects that supported the Baha'I Faith. He always had lots of ideas on different products that he could develop and he constantly thought about the best way of promoting those products. In the days leading up to his death, it was as if his brain was working on overdrive. He had so many ideas at that time that it was all I could do to keep up with them all and give him feedback.

REFER AND MARS

Many years before he created Explore!, he create a program to search the Baha'i Writings. The first of these programs was called Refer, and it ran on DOS based computers. Later he added The Koran and The Bible to Refer. A few years later he expanded and consolidated the programs and moved it to the Windows operating system. The Windows program was called MARS (Multiple Author Refer System).

The origin or Refer began in the early 80s. Lee had the idea to create a computer program to generate a concordance from Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah. We became acquainted with each other as a result of that project: I typed Gleanings into the computer. Then Lee and I proofread the electronic text many times. He ran the program, generating the concordance, and printed out all the occurrences. Originally, he limited the phrases to 72 characters which produced some really strange phrases which we had to modify for greater clarity. Over time this was refined with the subsequent concordances to the Iqan and Epistle to the Son of the Wolf.

As Baha'u'llah's writings were digitized, the necessity for accuracy caused the need for a proofreading project which Lee headed at the request of the Universal House of Justice. He enlisted many volunteers who all had to successfully complete a proofreading test. We had many teams who did the work. As more and more titles were completed, the database of books combined with the search engine to become Refer. `Abdu'l-Baha's and Shoghi Effendi's works were also included as separate Refers. When Lee decided to put them all together, they became "MARS". We celebrated this event with a huge MARS party at the Tangler's home in San Clemente.

IMPORTANT DATES

At the time of his death, I came across these notebooks, and in one he had a page titled "...Important Dates in My Life". Two of these most important dates centered around his work of putting the Baha'i Writings on software. The first date corresponded to the release of MARS (the first of Lee's software programs) and the second date was the day that EXPLORE was released.

WHEN EXPLORE WAS FIRST RELEASED

I remember sitting with Lee the day that the first delivery of EXPLORE! was to be made. It was like being with a child waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. When the UPS truck drove up, we ran down the steps to accept the box and then ran right back into his home to open it and see how the final product looked. It was a glorious day for Lee as he knew that with this product, more people would have access to the Baha'i Writings.

DANA POINT

Lee Nelson loved Dana Point, he loved life and most of all, he loved the Baha'i Faith. When he passed on to the next realm, he was doing the kind of work that made him happiest and fulfilled what he believed was his purpose in life - to serve the Faith.

The Shrine of The Bab, reflected in Lee's sunglasses.