My late friend Barry, aka Bearcat and our B17 ride!

[choctaw111]

For those of you who've been around the Il2 sim for a LONG time, you'll remember Bearcat99 over at the UbiZoo, then the Banana Forum.
He was a moderator there and loved WW2 aviation. 
I got to know Barry on the forums from 20 years ago and we became good friends.  Barry was a fellow service member, him being Navy and me in the Army. 
We managed to get together numerous times over the years both here in PA and his home state of Virginia.
One such time was in 2008 when I took Barry and his son up in the B17, Yankee Lady, at Reading's WW2 Weedkend, one of the largest WW2 events in the world!  In the photo you can see that I have a cane, still healing from my last combat tour several years before. 
That was an amazing experience and glad that we were able to do that together.
The last several days, Barry has really been on my mind and I hadn't heard from him in a while so I called him.
The Verizon number was "temporarily suspended" and I didn't know what that meant so I headed over to his FB page
to leave him a message and...he passed away...over a year ago!
I feel absolutely awful.
I miss you, bro and I'm sorry I hadn't reached out in a while.
I'm taking this really hard right now ?

[Strewth]

Nice pics and great memories I bet.
I do remember Bearcat floating around back in the early 2000's.
I didn't have much to do with him, but he was always the decent bloke.

Cheers

 

[SCG_Tzigy]

srry mate

 

rip Bearcat

[Wardog5711]

Sorry for your loss.

Since there is an existing thread  for Barry, I'll lock this one so that any additional comments can be with the others.