Tim Stryker, founder of Galacticomm and maker of The MajorBBS and Worldgroup BBS Software, commits suicide in the Blue Mountains of Colorado.

 GENIUS SUCCUMBS TO DARKNESS
 Computer whiz had it all, but it wasn't enough

 Computer Genius, Entrepreneur Cuts Short Bright Future 
 By Raju Chebium, Associated Press writer 

 Timothy Stryker seemed to have it all -- a wife and four children, a 
 six-figure income, a home in the mountains and a high-tech company poised 
 to make him a millionaire many times over. 

 But something snapped inside the computer whiz, who at age 30 founded a 
 software company called Galacticomm in Fort Lauderdale. 

 On the night of Aug. 6, Mr. Stryker, 41, pulled off a remote road in the 
 Blue Mountains in northwest Colorado, stepped out of his car, put a 
 shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. 

 A man who once boasted he knew how to solve the world's problems lay dead 
 near some sagebrush, a suicide note for his wife, Christine, tucked in his 
 waistband. 

 Mr. Stryker once described himself as "a laid-back, barefoot programmer." 
 But beneath his easygoing demeanor lurked a darkness that he seldom shared 
 with friends, family or business associates -- Mr. Stryker apparently 
 suffered from bouts of severe depression. 

 "(His note) said he had been in a lot of pain most of his life ... that 
 he had temporary success with a family, with Galacticomm for a while, with 
 his writing, and his art and his friends, they were all very temporary 
 fixes," said his wife, Christine, in a telephone interview from Salt Lake 
 City. 

 Mr. Stryker's sister, Terry Stryker Merrifield, a physician in Wichita, 
 Kan., said the medication he took didn't seem to help. "The reason he gave 
 was covered deeply by a depression-controlled view of the world," said Dr. 
 Merrifield, who read the suicide note. 

 Mr. Stryker's family said he was happy most of the time. 

 "Until the end, he didn't think there was anything he couldn't accomplish," 
 said Christine Stryker. "I liked his self-assuredness and his playfulness. 
 Doesn't sound like a man like that would commit suicide now, does it?" 

 All his life, Timothy Stryker wanted to be a Renaissance Man. In addition 
 to building his software business, he wanted to create a perfect society 
 based on compassion and love. 

 Disgusted with American politics, Mr. Stryker began a movement called 
 Superdemocracy to computerize voting and help people follow politics in 
 cyberspace. 

 He authored three books, but saw their sales languish. Undaunted, he 
 planned to write many more. 

 "Tim took himself very seriously. He really felt that he had all the 
 answers," said Peter Ackerman, who helped edit Mr. Stryker's 1993 book, 
 "Think A Little: Evolutionary Perspectives On The Future Of Civilization," 
 which sold less than 3,000 copies. 

 "Based on his philosophy, he had a high level of frustration." 

 Mr. Stryker relinquished day-to-day control of Galacticomm three years ago 
 -- but remained chairman and held more than half the company's stock -- and 
 moved from South Florida to Utah a year ago. He said it was a better place 
 to raise his four children, Ace, Mars, Asia and Zachariah. 

 Friends described Mr. Stryker as brilliant, arrogant, affectionate, 
 visionary and impatient. One thing remained constant throughout his life 
 -- he was forever thirsting for knowledge. 

 "Most people listen to the radio while driving around in their cars. I 
 think about things," he wrote in the opening chapter of "Think A Little," 
 a rambling tome on the world's problems and how to fix them. 

 "I sit and puzzle over why birds have feathers, and why my wife looks so 
 good, and where the world is going." 

 Dr. Merrifield said Mr. Stryker exhibited a keen intelligence since he was 
 a child. Born in Washington, D.C., Mr. Stryker moved with his family to 
 Hong Kong and Taiwan for a few years during his teens because his father 
 was employed by the U.S. Information Service. 

 Mr. Stryker graduated from Brown University in 1977 with a bachelor's 
 degree in physics, and designed a coin-operated video game soon after that. 
 Soon, he was a consultant for the Florida Solar Energy Center, General 
 Electric and a number of other firms. 

 He founded Galacticomm in 1985, quickly building it into a big player in the 
 electronic bulletin board market. The company made modem boards and wrote 
 software that allowed anyone with a desktop computer to get into the 
 bulletin board business. 

 Mr. Stryker mostly hired people like him -- more comfortable in jeans and 
 T-shirts than suits and ties with a love for computers and technology. 

 Like his personality, his business practices were eccentric, said Scott 
 Brinker, Galacticomm's chief operating officer and one of Mr. Stryker's 
 closest friends. To show his appreciation, Mr. Stryker would take his 50 
 or so employees on all-expenses-paid weekend jaunts to the Caribbean. 

 "Tim always thought to push beyond the envelope what the rest of us 
 mill around in," Mr. Brinker said. 

 Though immersed in the daily rigmarole of running Galacticomm, Mr. Stryker 
 never lost sight of his ultimate goal: to improve the world through 
 computers, Mr. Brinker said. That belief spawned the Superdemocracy 
 movement, which aimed to connect all Americans with cyberspace so they 
 could vote on national policy -- and eliminate Congress, state 
 legislatures, city councils and the court systems. 

 Mr. Stryker believed such high-tech, direct democracy would eliminate 
 special interests, corruption, miscarriage of justice and other ills of 
 the American political system. 

 While Mr. Stryker delved deeper into his passions and reduced contact with 
 Galacticomm, big changes were under way at the company. It reinvented 
 itself after the Internet made the bulletin board business obsolete. 

 Its flagship software program -- Worldgroup 2.0 -- allows people to 
 construct their own Websites and install features like polls and 
 questionnaires. Galacticomm's 42 employees also write newspaper software 
 and design corporate Intranet, an Internet and e-mail system within a firm. 

 Today, Galacticomm's customer base reads like a who's who of corporate 
 America -- Sony, Sega of America, McDonnell Douglas, MCI and AT&T among  
 others. 

 Mr. Stryker would have been pleased with Galacticomm's progress, his wife 
 said. He had more reasons to be happy -- his children had joined a Mormon 
 church and the Stryker family felt a sense of community with neighbors in 
 Utah. 

 When the effects of his medication wore off, he plunged into sadness -- but 
 no one suspected he was so down he would kill himself, Dr. Merrifield said. 

 "(He was) rather private in a lot of ways. It wasn't that he wasn't talking 
 about his inner self, but he would pick and choose what he was going to talk 
 about," she said. "Looking back, you could always say, 'Jeez, should I have 
 noticed this or noticed that?' But realistically there was no clue." 

Source

http://www.s-t.com/daily/10-96/10-08-96/b01li046.htm