It is with deep sadness that I am posting about the passing of John
Busam, Editor of 'Midwest Gaming and Travel'. I have known John for
only about a half dozen years and our contact has been intermittent. The
last time I spoke with John was on Friday January 13th, as we were
finalizing topics for my new column in Midwest Gaming and Travel. As
John had mentioned many times, all his writers write under pseudonyms,
and almost like a rite of passage he extended that tradition to me in
the email that started our most recent round of conversations.
Good afternoon Maven, How are you? It's been awhile since we've spoken.
I see your "Vegas Whats Up" and am wondering if there is something we
can jointly do with it. My readers are always looking for info about Las
Vegas and I think your "VWU" could be that source. One problem I see is
my deadlines possibly being too far out for you to accumulate the
information.
If you agree, please let me know when we can chat about this. Regards,
John Busam/editor
If you were scheduling our phone conversations you would probably allot
15 minutes for the tasks at hand. However the conversations would
invariably follow this pattern, we would almost immediately digress into
topics about local casinos, gambling legislation, professional poker
players, casino executives, casino writers... and then realize an hour
later that we hadn't made any progress with the topic at hand.
In our final conversation, after we finalized topics for my first column
John said: " You'll be the Anthony Curtis of the Midwest"
Anthony Curtis (Tony Curtis) another pseudonym, but John Busam was not
a pseudonym but was a real person that will really be missed by those
that knew him and enjoyed the magazine that he crafted.
Perhaps the many professional writers on vpFree that knew John could
share their memories of working with John.
You can leave condolences at the following online memorial.
http://tinyurl.com/6wzdrmu
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