Amy Fulton:

Bill Ferguson:

Bob Ruple: Worked at Fox Software in Perrysburg, Ohio from 1989 until the buyout in 1992. Hired in around Thanksgiving of 1989 for the release of FoxPro 1.0.

Chris Williams: As vice president of Human Resources (HR), Chris Williams is responsible for the strategies and programs that enable Microsoft's chief asset, its people, to do their best work. Included in these responsibilities are the areas of recruiting, compensation, benefits, management development, diversity, organizational consulting and general support for the company.

Williams has had a wide variety of assignments within Microsoft. He joined Human Resources in 1997 as HR director of the Platform and Applications Group. Before working in HR, Williams was general manager in the Developer Tools Division, with responsibility for the Microsoft® Visual C++® development system, the Microsoft Developer Network, a number of shared components and the localization of all development tools. Before that assignment, Williams was director of product development, responsible for improving and supporting the software development process across the entire Microsoft product line. Williams has also been general manager for the Microsoft Visual C++ group responsible for all the non-Intel compilers. He joined Microsoft in July 1992 as part of Microsoft's merger with Fox Software Inc.

Before coming to Microsoft in the merger, Williams was the development manager at Fox Software, where he worked for more than four years. He has also worked at Digital Equipment Corp. and owned his own consulting firm, specializing in the DEC VAX system at both.

He holds a bachelor of science degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

David Fulton: Fulton and his wife ran a software consulting firm, Dacor Computer Systems, Inc. Under a subcontract from Fox Software, Dacor wrote computer programs. Fulton formed Fulton Associates in 1985 after selling his interest in Dacor to his wife as part of a divorce settlement to devote his attention full-time to FoxBASE.

In 1986, LaValley and Fulton formed Fox Holdings as a joint venture between Gerard Associates and Fulton Associates. Fox Holdings developed programs called FoxBASE, FoxBASE+, FoxBASE/Mac, and FoxPro, each subsequent version being an improvement over the previous one. When Microsoft merged with Fox Software, Fulton became a Microsoft vice president. He and his programming team from Fox Holdings moved to Seattle.

Dave Fulton and Bill Ferguson wrote the original product. It was released in December 1984. Fox had 6 employees at the time. Dave's future wife Amy was one of them.

Dave McClanahan:

Delos M. Palmer: Fox Research was formed in 1983 by Richard LaValley, Sr, who became chairman and a director. Delos Palmer was one of nine original Fox Research investors, each of whom invested $25,000. In 1984, seven of the nine, including Palmer and LaValley invested an additional $15,000.

Gerard Associates, Inc., a management company that LaValley owns, became the tenth investor in Fox Research in 1984 and 1985, acquiring a 1/10 interest. As a result, Palmer's 1/9 interest became a 1/10 interest, and LaValley's 3/9 interest became a 3/10 interest. Other ownership interests in Fox Research diminished similarly.

Palmer filed an action individually and derivatively, as a shareholder, on behalf of all of the shareholders of Fox Research, Inc., alleging that the defendants improperly took knowledge which Fox Research paid for and owned, and opportunities which Fox Research should have had, and used them to develop the Fox Programs under the ownership of Fox Holdings. According to the complaint, Fox Research was established to own and finance development of computer database software programs conceived and developed by Fulton and marketed by Fox Software. See "Delos M. Palmer vs Fox Research", for details.

Edward Yoon:

Erik Christensen:

Glenn Hart: Glenn was an independent consultant based in the New York area that made a large number of contributions to the Fox Community. Glenn served as editor of FoxTalk magazine, was a contributing writer to PC Magazine and operated as a Sysop of the Fox Software Forum on CompuServe. Glenn also worked as a consultant to Fox Software, primarily in a marketing capacity. Many insiders at Fox Software viewed Glenn as the voice of reason that Dr. Fulton would listen to during times when he was angry or when there was a sensitive situation to be handled.

Glenn passed away in January of 1992. He died of a heart attack that he suffered while out to dinner with several prominent members of the FoxPro community, including Randy Brown. I've often thought that selling FoxPro to Microsoft was the only way that all of the things Glenn meant and did for FoxPro could be replaced. Glenn was always the consummate gentleman in much the same way that Tom Rettig was. He also had a great, somewhat offbeat and self-defacing sense of humor and shot a mean game of pool.

Hal Pawluk: Besides being one of the Fox Software's People, Hal also was part of "The Ashton-Tate People".

Howard J. Moskowitz: In November of 1989 I became employee #65, when Dr. Dave offered me a once-in-a-lifetime position to join Fox Software as Director of Technical Support. As he interviewed me, he sat there designing the color logo for the FoxPro disk envelopes - Purple - to seal the job offer he gave me an empty FoxPro Box and took me on a tour of the Shopping Center offices where just about every operation was being handled...from software development, to packaging boxes, copying 5 1/4 inch disks and shrink wrapping...and of course loading UPS trucks with boxes.

I took the plunge and gave up 23 years in Public Education and joined Fox Software. I remember on the Friday that I finalized my deal, I came to meet with Dr. Dave and Mr. LaValley - we had been in a conference room for a couple of hours. They said call your wife and they left...when I came out the secretary said they went to get a beer and wine cooler. I laughed, thinking she was kidding...but no in fact during those early days on Fridays after 4:00 they would bring all kinds of beer and wine cooler beverages and the staff would take a break. This changed very quickly as we began to grow - instead of alcohol we switched to providing breakfast on Monday mornings. All soda pop and coffee was provided at no cost to all...this helped create a great feeling among staff.

My first day of work was the day after Thanksgiving, we had just begun to ship FoxPro. At that time I was responsible for Technical Support, Documentation, Quality Control, Book Publishers, Training and everything technical related to after the sale of the product.

My staff consisted of an assistant manager - Bart Hanline - who had been with Fox for a while and went on to work for Microsoft- 7 support technicians and 4 documentation writers. I was given the go ahead to begin hiring new staff and that is what I did. I began to build a world class technical support department with over 75 technicians by Feb. of 1992 when Microsoft finalized the deal. I created various teams with senior level support leaders and we began to actively recruit at the various Universities throughout the midwest.

I look back and I chuckle...I was instrumental in implementing the CompuServe Forum and online support activities. Back during those days CompuServe would pay us a 10-15% royalty fee based on the number of online hours from endusers in the Fox Forums. The monthly royalty checks would be made out to me personally...because I was the official who signed all of the contracts. In the end after Microsoft took over the Toledo, (actually Perrysburg) operations, the checks continued to be sent in my name. I remember being contacted by someone at Microsoft and being told they had a couple of checks for me from CompuServe and would I pick them up. In actuality I just signed them over and left them.

I declined moving to Microsoft, and did some consulting with 15 former Fox employees - this lasted for three years. I started to get involved with the Internet and joined another company to help implement online technical support.

Knowing that I would eventually get back into public education I went to work for the State of Ohio Department of Education as a consultant, I am now Director of Technology with the Ann Arbor Public Schools....I have been there since 1999, I still live in Toledo and commute each day to Ann Arbor.

Janet Womak:

Janet Zimmerman: Now Janet Walker.

Jeff Holth: I joined the Fox team in April 1986, a bit before FoxBASE+ was released. I was brought on board to work side by side with a guy by the name of Ed Yoon, who left about a year later to take on an internship in WA DC as I recall. Together, Ed and I fielded all incoming sales and support calls. I was focused mainly on Sales and Ed on support. We both worked under two Janets, Janet Zimmerman (now Walker) and Janet Womak. Janet Womak was primarily sales and marketing, and Janet Zimmerman (Walker) technical. Both Ed and I were actually still in college at the time, myself as a Computer Science major at Bowling Green University, just down the road from Perrysburg at the tender age of 21.

As I think back, there were a total of 8 employees physically in the Perrysburg OH office when I joined, including myself and a receptionist. So that would be Janet Zimmerman, Janet Womak, Edward Yoon, Dave Fulton, Amy Fulton, Bill Ferguson, a receptionist (this changed a couple of times) and myself. I did not know Eric Christiansen at the time, but I believe he was doing some work on the products on the side, so I think that makes me employee number 9, 10, or 11. Eric later came on full time approx. a couple of years later, and as you know, was the primary architect of the Rushmore Technology. He almost always had a stopwatch hanging from his neck.

I often think back on working with that entire group as the most interesting, and educational phase of my carreer thus far. In any case, personally, I eventually became full time sales, and then managed the sales staff as it grew right up until I left in June of 1990.

By then, there must have been 75 people working for Fox, including overseas personnel in the UK. My other major responsibility was to be the first line contact for all of the major distributors in the Americas and the Pacific Rim. During that time, I also briefly managed the support staff, and very early on, duped the disks, boxed, wrapped, and shipped the products daily like EVERYONE in the office did.

After I left, I did some consulting and development in the Toledo area, move to Michigan to join another small software company, then went to a network integration/software development and training company, and now, I work as a corporate Account Manager for NETg in the eLearning space, still in Michigan.

Les Pinter: Les Pinter, founder of Pinter Consulting was employee #22 with Fox Software. While working toward a Ph.D. in Economics at Rice University in Houston, Les teamed up with Mike Griffin and Bill Radding to create the Magic Wand, the fourth word processor ever written for CPM microcomputers. The Ph.D. went on hold, and the company was born. In September of 1980, a 23-year-old Bill Gates called and offered to buy the Magic Wand. He arrived the next day, carried the code back to Seattle, and a year later Microsoft Word came appeared.

Since then, Les has remained in the center of the microcomputer software industry. He was the developer of the Real Estate Guide, the first add-on product for use with Lotus 1-2-3. He began developing database applications using dBASE II and III, then FoxBASE, and finally FoxPro. Les has written 6 books (all for McGraw-Hill), as well as over 260 articles on VB, ASP and FoxPro, with a seventh book about VB.NET in the works. He published the Pinter FoxPro Letter, a monthly journal for database developers, for 10 years in the United States and for 4 years in Russia. Les gives seminars on database development for Microsoft and other organizations in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Russian.

Mike Feltman: Founded F1 Technologies as Neon Software in 1990. Mike is the chief architect and lead developer of the Visual FoxExpress framework and is also very involved with F1 Technologies' consulting and training practices.

Mike got his start in computers at the age of 15 as an assistant instructor at the University of Toledo and became an instructor at the University of Toledo at the age of 17. Mike also is a former employee of Fox Software, the original creators of FoxPro. At Fox Software Mike worked in technical support and marketing, developed in-house systems and performed product maintenance on the FoxCentral module in FoxBase+.

Mike has spoken at FoxPro and database conferences as well as countless user groups throughout North America and in Europe. Mike has written articles for FoxPro Advisor and FoxTalk magazines. Mike has been programming in XBase languages since he was a teenager and is an addict to object-oriented technology. Mike served as technical editor on Hentzenwerke Publishing's book, "Building Visual FoxPro Applications with Visual FoxExpress."

Pat Adams::

Richard LaValley, Sr: Fox Research was formed in 1983 by LaValley, Sr. ("LaValley"), who became chairman and a director. Delos Palmer was one of nine original Fox Research investors, each of whom invested $25,000. In 1984, seven of the nine, including Palmer and LaValley invested an additional $15,000. LaValley subsequently acquired the interest of the remaining two of the nine investors, resulting in his having a 3/9 ownership interest. David Fulton was president of Fox Research. Fulton was not a shareholder in Fox Research.

Gerard Associates, Inc., a management company that LaValley owns, became the tenth investor in Fox Research in 1984 and 1985, acquiring a 1/10 interest. As a result, Palmer's 1/9 interest became a 1/10 interest, and LaValley's 3/9 interest became a 3/10 interest. Other ownership interests in Fox Research diminished similarly.

LaValley was a longtime lawyer to Delos M. Palmer, Palmer's family, Fox Research, Fox Software, Fulton, Fulton Associates, Dacor, and Gerard Associates. He is the father of Richard LaValley, Jr. ("LaValley, Jr."), also a lawyer.

In 1986, LaValley and Fulton formed Fox Holdings as a joint venture between Gerard Associates and Fulton Associates.

Tony Feltman: Is a partner in F1 Technologies and one of the principal developers in the FoxExpress product line. She has spoken at all of the FoxExpress Developers Conferences along with the Visual FoxPro DevCon 1999 and 2000, VFP DevCon Connections 2000, German FoxPro Developers Conference, FoxTeach, Great Lakes Great Database Workshop and various user groups throughout North America. She was also a judge of the 1998 and 1999 Visual FoxPro Excellence Awards. Prior to F1 Technologies, Toni worked for Fox Software, the company that originated FoxPro. She is also a Visual FoxPro instructor for AppDev.

Walter Kennamer: I first became aware of Fox Software in about 1985, when FoxBASE came out. This was the dBASE II compatible version. I was working at the accounting firm Ernst & Whinney (which later became Ernst & Young), and we were big dBASE II users. FoxBASE offered a compelling speed advantage, however, and over time we switched a lot of our database work to FoxBASE. In about 1986, I was trying to learn the Pascal programming language and decided to write a small program that would scan a FoxBASE+ program file and write a heading on it, showing things like which other programs it called, etc. One thing led to another, and in a few months I had a fairly elaborate documentation program roughed out. The program was called SNAP! and worked with most varieties of Xbase. It was a Shareware program, but without a fee.

Pat Adams told Dave Fulton about SNAP!, and he asked me if he could distribute it with FoxBASE+. I agreed to let him do so, and made a few small changes to customize it to work better with FoxBASE+.

In 1990, I left Ernst & Young to become the Chief Operating Officer at Fox, reporting to Dave. I was responsible for most of the company other than development, which reported directly to Dave. I was not involved in a direct way with the design or creation of the product, but worked mainly on marketing, product support, information systems and general management issues.

While with Fox, I continued to do some amateur programming with FoxDoc, FoxApp and some other small utilities. After Microsoft bought Fox in 1992, I moved to Redmond and began work as a honest-to-goodness developer on the product. I worked on FoxPro 2.6, 3.0 and 5.0 for about five years, mainly programming UI elements such as the query designer, the project manager, database designer, and for 5.0, the debugging environment.

I've worked on Internet projects at Microsoft since then and am still with the company.