Fourteenth O.T. Katie Thread

[butch46163@yahoo.com]

Thanks for all the Good Work you doing WEB-ED and it`s Truely Sad to lose such a Good person and Artist Like bOOm RIP !!!!!

[web-ed]

Thanks for all the Good Work you doing WEB-ED and it`s Truely Sad to lose such a Good person and Artist Like bOOm RIP !!!!!

Somehow, Butch, I missed your comment here until Willjohn just put me wise (over on the Weekly Updates thread). I don't have any definitive news about B00m at this time, but obviously we're all afraid the worst may have happened. I mentioned over there some of the severe problems that are impeding me personally on top of the inherent difficulty in locating someone whose real name is unknown (a little more on that below).

Thankyou for your efforts Web Ed, I am sure all of Katie's fans appreciate it. If you have a known location address, perhaps a letter sent might give us some idea of the issues. If you put a return address on the letter and it is sent back then we will have more of an idea to comprehend.

Because of everything else going on, I hadn't wanted to delve too deeply into my search just now. Our own D. M. Sherwood had lent me a hand in the search, but the lead we were working on fizzled out. I don't want to reveal the putative name, because it belongs to a completely different spanking artist (confirmed alive after B00m's last appearance here) with whom I thought it might be shared by a truly amazing coincidence. But that name and the corresponding address in Topeka, Kansas seem to have been completely wrong somehow, which I was fortunately able to ascertain without actually traveling to Topeka - a long way from Chicago (not that I live in the city).

I do have another lead and will follow it up when a lot of other things are cleared out of the way. It probably won't be real soon, but I'll try to have some sort of update by the end of May.

[web-ed]

I wish I had more definite news, but let me give you all what I have.

I started out with two leads: I had B00m's email address (or one of them) from this board (any member can see it because B00m never hid it using his User Control Panel) and Mike had a name and address in Topeka, Kansas.

Now, a search on the email address turned up a possible name, but that name didn't match anything else and was extremely common so it ended up as pretty much a dead end. (Of course I also tried sending an email to the address but there was no response. Any of you can get this address if you want; the only reason I'm not listing it in this post is that I don't want all the robots picking it up and spamming it, even though that may not matter at this point).

I also found an Instagram account for "HugoB00m" but it seemed focused on food and wine (strange if this was our man), and was abandoned for what the account holder thought were greener pastures (still to be further examined), and before I could research further my own Instagram account, which I only opened to search for B00m, was suspended for reasons that are unclear. My response to Instagram (and Facebook) is unprintable. My tentative conclusion is that this was a different HugoB00m, since his known or suspected employment history (yes, I checked that too!) doesn't match our B00m's.

Searching on the name that Mike provided and the physical address produced conflicting information that really confused everything. (I don't want to give either here at this time for reasons of privacy). First, the name matched that of a different artist (but of course could have pseudonymous) but did not match that on the property records for Topeka. Second, it didn't match the two names that turned up in connection with the email address. Third, the property records matched two different parcels of land to this one address!

At length I began to doubt the accuracy of the address, thinking it might have gotten garbled in Mike's records somehow, but then I remembered something and began searching through B00m's posts on this board. There are over 7000 of them, but they can be searched using the search box on the Home Page (or in my case also by searching the text file backups of the posts although I didn't use this method), and B00m did mention living in Kansas (home to O. T. Katie as well) and working at an auto parts store. So I'm going back to the address and will send an inquiry via snail mail. Maybe B00m is still there - there have been no recorded sales of the property within the past year - or maybe someone residing there knows what happened to him.

So that's where we stand. This is still an extremely difficult time for me and I can't spare either much time or energy for the search, but I will continue when I can and of course I'll keep everyone advised of what happens next.

[web-ed]

Most of us suspected that HugoB00m's sudden disappearance from these pages after April 28, 2024 did not augur anything good, and I'm afraid that after speaking to someone in Topeka with direct knowledge (although who apparently did not know of B00m's secret life as a
spanking artist) I can now confirm the worst: B00m passed away in May of last year after a sudden illness. I don't have more details
as there was no obituary posted online.

I'm not going to reveal B00m's real name here as he probably wouldn't have wanted that. What matters is what he did for us, and that was a whole lot! There are some early animations - I may even have one in the files somewhere - and there were his many modifications of comic-book panels (e.g. Suzie), but most of all there is O. T. Katie. Some of the early strips are probably lost to us forever, but what remains is an enormous body of work occupying the majority of his 7298(!) posts on this board and a large part of the picture files attached to our posts (there are 6340 of these in total). Everybody loved the strip, and B00m kept it fresh for us over the years with a variety of storylines. It's been years since I've had time to look at the search terms leading people to CSR, but some variation of "O. T. Katie" was usually in the list, meaning people were trying to find the strip when they came to CSR.

These past few years have been very difficult for me, and with my own output diminished compared to what it had been at one time, B00m's contributions became more important than ever. He really took up the slack around here, and it made a difference because every site needs fresh content to keep people coming back.

Thanks for all you did for us here at CSR, B00m. None of us will forget you. Rest in peace, our benefactor and friend.

[willjohn]

Very sad news. Boom will indeed be missed, my sympahies to his family and friends.

[Dave Wolfe]

Kim just informed me of this sad news over on my often neglected blog.

A couple of decades ago and more, Boom and I were in a Yahoo Group when the Internet was new, "Arild's Movie Spanking," which had almost nothing to do with movies. This was where his "OTKatie" first appeared, as far as I know, and there were a lot of other fun and talented people, like my dear friend Phil "Overbarrrel," who died from ALS a few years ago, contributing humor, art, and exploring "this thing we do," discovering our particular interest was not, after all, a sign of perversion, but fairly common, and held by a lot of decent, caring, giving individuals.

Boom was such. As a matter of fact, if memory serves, he was instrumental in putting together a first-year anniversary post at Arild's, combining all the artists' work into an "awards ceremony."

Boom and I never became as close as Phil and I did, nor some of the others, but he was a fine and talented man, and losing him makes the world sadly emptier.

Thank you, Web, for your tribute, and for supplying the venue for Boom's marvelous comics all this time.

Dave Wolfe