This is a painful (and belated) post to write.

Les Ibarra, who joined us eight and a half years ago, has left to pursue a career as an electrician with Alcoa in Bettendorf, Iowa. Les has been an integral part of DeltaQuest almost since its inception in September of 1998. The result of a conversation with the woman who cut our hair (I used to have some) and despite some reservations, we hired him in desperation in late 1999. Amy and I were absolutely buried with work and had a baby due in April 2000. Pretty soon 20 hour days weren’t going to be an option any longer. Basically, we needed a “body”, any body.

Les turned out to be pretty much the ideal employee in every way. Organized, polite, courteous, and always willing to stay late and do whatever it took to get the work out, he was truly superb.

I’ll never forget racing downtown to old the UPS office on Jackson Street in his late model beater of a Cadillac in the winter of 1999, as if we were John Belushi and Dan Akroyd in the Blues Brothers so we could get there for the last air drop off at 10:30. We slid to a stop in front of the departing UPS truck, blocking him in, leaped out of the car and practically threw the packages at him. Another set of orders on their way in time for the holidays. Whew.

Then there was the clog in the main drain the night before we were to move to Forest Park. Five hours, 50 gallons of water on the floor of the brand new space below ours and buckets full of overflowing black stinky muck later, we had the clog cleared. As it turned out, this was merely a portent of things to come with the move. But through it all, Les was there, ready and willing to do whatever it took to move things forward.

So ends one leg of many in our continued journey.

Best wishes, Les, to you and your (hopefully) soon-to-be-growing family.

We’ll miss you.