There's this comment long ago about getting in contact with him that has always made me curious, but no information was proffered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7871260

And, of course, there's this picture that was found of him:

https://zappa.brainiac.com/MelKaye.png

> but no information was proffered

What more would you like to know? I'm bad at telling stories, but I can do Q&A.

:D I'm just guessing at questions, since I don't have much context.

You found him-- did you get to really talk to him? Find out how he looks back on that era? Did he keep programming?

What scared him away?

> You found him-- did you get to really talk to him?

Yes. Here's the e-mail exchange: http://acuozzo.sdf.org/Mel.pdf

(I moved all of my e-mails to Gmail via Thunderbird years ago which is why the sender address is different.)

I found him after Bill Bryner mentioned in an e-mail that Mel "was trying to become an expert (Master?) at Bridge and also played flute with the UCLA pep band for basketball games".

I figured he hadn't moved far from where he was working in LA at the time and I was right! His e-mail address was listed among the members of the Thousand Oaks, CA ACBL Unit 532 Bridge club/league.

> Find out how he looks back on that era? Did he keep programming?

I couldn't find any of this out because I scared him away. My guess is that he just wasn't the nostalgic type.

> What scared him away?

My guess is that he was spooked because I contacted his son a few days prior.

… and the webmaster responsible for running his son's business' website.

… and several other people. I must have seemed like a genuine creeper.

I guess Mel could have been in the region of 80 years old at the time, and the few 80 year olds I’ve known have been very private individuals.

Oh. Thank you for sharing the e-mail exchange.

That's too bad he wasn't interested in talking about it all. I can imagine if he was aware of it, having random people pop-up wanting to discuss could become annoying.

Thank you for the info!