Terrible news - John "Sco" Scofield, an old Otakon hand who was con chair in 1998, has died of cancer. I hadn't seen him in years, and had no idea he was sick.

Sco worked for the NSA. He was an old-fashioned tech guy, but he worked in the guest relations department at the con. He was the first chair of the convention who wasn't part of the old "PSSFS-Alumni" clique. He lived in Maryland somewhere between Baltimore and DC. We had a couple of planning meetings at his condo; I remember he had a small pachinko machine in his living room.

The last time I saw him was at a "ComCon" winter gathering back when I had come back to the convention to work as a nameless goon in the registration department. That must have been February 2003. This is kind of a shock, he was far too young for this.