The words “Review, Edit, Purge” were  burned into my mind on January 9th, 2016 during a board meeting of the Rocky Mountain Bonsai Society. I was the webmaster for the club on that day, I resigned as the webmaster shortly after the meeting was over.

The reason for my resignation was over the use of three words “Review, Edit, Purge” by then President of the club Tom Anglewicz. Tom made a proposal to the board on that day to allow him to “Review, Edit, Purge” the clubs website on the premise that the webmaster was putting inferior quality things on the clubs website. I immediately objected to this lie and informed the board that there was no truth to what Tom just said. I had already made a personal commitment that I would never do this and I kept my word on this subject. Despite my denial on this subject the board members present that day voted in the majority to allow President Tom Anglewicz to “Review, Edit, Purge” the website.

After being the webmaster for 880 days I knew immediately what the future would be for the clubs website if the “Review, Edit, Purge” was carried out. The website would fail and I would be blamed. My only choice in the matter was to resign and turn the website over to President Tom Anglewicz. At the time of my resignation the clubs website was receiving thousands of visitors a month.

For the next 3 years President Tom Anglewicz and former President Patrick Allen were in charge of the clubs website. Any and all work being done on the clubs website were at the direction of these two gentleman.

Here is screen capture of the clubs website on 01-10-2016 and you can see all of the development work that was done by me.

Every bit of work I ever did on behalf of the club and the club members themselves were “Reviewed, Edited, Purge(d)” right off the website. Nothing was spared not even the “RMBS Image Gallery” pages. These are basically show photos taken during the clubs shows and the 2012 ABS/BCI International Bonsai Convention held here in Denver and sponsored by our club.

The following screenshot taken on 08-02-2016 shows how the website looked on that day.

The “Review, Edit, Purge” was now complete and a new phase began with President Tom Anglewicz describing the clubs website as “A work in progress”.

Approximately two months latter the clubs website “A work in progress” looked like this screenshot below.

Here is another screenshot taken of the clubs “A work in progress” website on 12-28-2018.

As you can see not much work has been done on the clubs “A work in progress” website. For three years these two gentlemen could have built the website into anything they wanted, but they did not. I think the posting of President Tom Anglewicz bio on the clubs website to be arrogant and personally insulting to every club member who ever belonged to the organization. Not one other club member was worth being on the clubs website except President Tom Anglewicz.

I personally built my own website and it went online in Oct. 2016. I reused somewhere around 90% of things I used on the clubs website on my own personal website. For the next three years I continued to add similar content to my website. The same stuff that was deleted right off the clubs website. My three year anniversary was 10-01-2019.

Lets look at some statistics comparing the three years that the clubs website was under the control of Tom and Patrick and my own website for the last three years.

RMBS Club Website Total Visitors over three years:    1,095

My own website Total Visitors over three years:    89,175

Here is a screen shot of my website showing the 3+ years of visitors.

The truth has come out now about the lie that was told on 01-09-2016 that the webmaster was putting inferior quality stuff on the clubs website. Tom lied to the board to gain control over the website. Father time over the last three years has exposed the lies told by Tom and Patrick. The clubs website content that was deleted was reused to build my own website. Continued daily management of my website has continued its growth to where it is today.

Under the direction and control of President Tom Anglewicz the clubs website continued to decay into a website with approximately 1 vistor a day.

Who is to blame? President Tom Anglewicz had a duty and responsibility to find out what his proposal “Review, Edit, Purge” would do to the clubs website. If Tom had indeed found out what was going to happen, he would have known the clubs website would eventually fail with little to no visitors to it. If he did find this out and he still went ahead and did his “Review, Edit, Purge” then Tom deliberately destroyed the clubs website. President Tom Anglewicz is equally guilty of destroying the clubs website if he did not find out what was going to happen and just went ahead and completed his “Review, Edit, Purge”. Either way the responsibility for the demise of the clubs website is the fault of President Tom Anglewicz.

I am a severely disabled Multiple sclerosis patient with severe cognitive and severe fatigue issues. I thought I could give back to the club by being the webmaster for the club. There are some days I only do a few things a day. I thought I could do a good job as webmaster and I could work on it any time of the day. If I got tired, I could just simply stop and come back to it. I could do it safely from home. I wanted to be the clubs webmaster for life.

After I joined the club I kept meeting club members who in my opinion treated me with kindness, respect and dignity. You can sum these words up as “Kindness, Respect, Dignity” how could you not fall in love with the Rocky Mountain Bonsai Society when you were treated this way and not just once either. I have spent the last 3 years seeking these people out and letting them know just how special a person they are to me. I still have a few more to tell. These good people are the light of the club and finally one day I learned about the dark side of the club. Where lies, egos, pompous attitudes, arrogance lives. The day that President Tom Anglewicz had all of my 880 days as webmaster deleted right off the website was the day the love affair with the club ended. On that day President Tom Anglewicz robbed me of 880 days of my life that I wasted on the clubs website. That time was precious to me as some days I only worked on the clubs website. I wish I had that time back as I could have been doing something else. Tom might as well as told me to my face that my work was not good enough for the Rocky Mountain Bonsai Society and neither was I.

The following song sung by 14 year old Jasmine Elcock askes the question is “there life after love?”. The answer is yes there is. She goes on to sing “I don’t need you anymore”. I correlate the beautiful song with my relationship with the club. I simply do not need the club any more and have simply continued to do what I love and that is helping artists with their Bonsai. I do that via my own website.

My comments today have nothing to do with the clubs new website and the people running it.