Steve Wolfe. One of the original members of a shadowy bunch of geeks who spent their time playing Doom and things to justify putting a very fast (for the time) LAN into parts of our building and especially the basement. I was new to that type of community and together with Richard S. and a slightly mad Welshman we were locked into a room in the basement. Next door (and it was big steel door!) were the noisy team, of which Steve was a key part. Apparently doing mysterious things which delighted Dave F, our immediate boss, but drove our Department Manager Andy B. to distraction. Especially as Steve had no concept of Civil Service working hours and spent a lot of time outside, smoking. But Dave F swore he was pure gold.
So, I went away for a few years and when I came back I discovered someone had promised our big bosses that we could build a special widget. We couldn’t. I was given the task of sorting it out and told Steve would hold my hand for the techie bits. We had a chat which boiled down to him calling the original researcher a few unpleasant names. I asked if the task could be done. After more, interesting, language, he said ‘Possibly’. I of course took that as ‘Yes’ and regularly had a conversation with Steve about progress, of which I understood not a word. After about 4 months our bosses got curious, along the lines of ‘This is very urgent, don’t you know’. I spoke to Steve again and it turned out the task was much more complicated and dynamic than either of us had understood, in fact, almost impossible. But just a few weeks later, Steve announced it was complete, as tasked. At the 5 month point we briefed our bosses again, who blithely said ‘Oh, it’s all changed, never mind it.’ Steve was not impressed. ‘Cretins’ was the most printable word he said, if I remember rightly. But, you know, he worked so hard on that task and we all learned so much from him that it was all worthwhile. He was an original, core component of what is now a National capability. A sad loss for us all.