Mourning the tragic passing of Glenda Vigoreaux, trainer/speaker on CF and more
Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
I'm sorry to break the news, but I've not seen anyone else blog about this. Some of you may have known Glenda Vigoreaux, a widely acclaimed trainer and speaker in the CF and broader Adobe world. Sadly, she was found dead in her Glendale AZ home earlier this week, of unnatural causes. I'll have more on that in a moment, including more about her surprisingly storied past (entirely unrelated to training and speaking) that may be a surprise to some (it was for me).
But first I'd like to remember her as I knew her.
Glenda, the acclaimed trainer and speaker
Glenda was an Adobe Certified Master Instructor who had taught Adobe/Macromedia technologies starting in 1998, including ColdFusion, Dreamweaver, Captivate, Contribute, Acrobat Connect and Presenter. She was widely praised and received consistently high marks, working for Roundpeg in Arizona (since 2005) and who before that had been on her own as GVX Technology since 1996.
Glenda was an equally lauded and popular conference speaker, winning best speaker honors at Max 2004 and CFUnited 2005 (we tied that year). You can find a podcast of her 2006 talk on CF printing and Reporting as well as her CFUnited bio of that year. You can learn more of her professional history from her LinkedIn page. She was even a speaker on the ColdFusion Meetup in May 2005, when Steven Erat was hosting.
Suicide? Glenda?
The most tragic thing about the news is that her death has been ruled a suicide. I just can't fathom that. Besides the accolades above, anyone who knew her would say that she would seem one of the very last people in the world you could ever expect of being driven to that. In fact, if you look at the about page of her GVX site, you see that she had a clear passion for life, and for others.
Of course, I'd not talked to her in a couple of years, and naturally people's personal lives can often be masked by their public persona. Indeed there was much more to her background than many may have known (I didn't). I learned of her death today in an email from Steve Drucker (for which I'm so grateful). In it, he pointed to a news article (translated from Spanish).
The story reports that her husband found her with a gun at her side, with the "forensic and physical evidence...consistent with a self-inflicted shooting". I didn't know her husband, named there as Paul Hacker.
She came from a famed family, tragically notorious in Puerto Rico
But in that story (and with additional details found in sources mentioned later here), we learn that in fact Glenda came from a background of both notoriety and family tragedy. I never knew that hers was a celebrity family in Puerto Rico. Not only were her father and mother famous there as a TV producer and actress, respectively, but tragically, her father was brutally murdered and her mother convicted of it and jailed for 13 years. Apparently, all this was big news in Puerto Rico.
Indeed, the wikiepedia entry on her mother has even already been updated to reflect Glenda's death, and her death is listed as well in Wikipedia's 2008 deaths page with references to her notable family members, all this just 3 days later as I write. Again, clearly this was significant news to some people.
As further sad testament to the notoriety of all this, the news article above even says her house in Glendale and her family's in PR were both "full of paparazzi" (representing Puerto Rican press, I'd suppose).
I was almost tempted to doubt if we were talking about the same person, since these things all referred to her as Glendaly Vigoreaux EchevarrÃa (the latter being her mother's famed last name). But then I found this memorial page which had that same "Glendaly" name but with happy pictures of her. Yep, that was the Glenda we knew.
A one-time TV star in Puerto Rico
The page goes on to offer still more about her family, their tragedy, and her life. It says that she herself had been a child TV star and later host, comedienne, and singer with her sister Vanesa on Puerto Rican TV shows.
That doesn't surprise me. She was certainly so full of life, which makes this all the more surprising.
R.I.P., Glenda
So today we remember the passing of a member of the CF community, a stellar trainer and speaker, mystified by the asserted cause of her death...while a segment of the celebrity gossip world instead regards it only as another tragedy for a notoriously troubled celebrity family. It just doesn't make sense.
She will be sorely missed.
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She was so full of life and positive energy that it shakes you to the core to think she may have taken her own life. She had that rare gift of leaving everyone she encountered feeling lighter, happier and more confident than before. You had no doubt you could master the material she was about to teach you.
May she be at peace.
I'm absolutely staggered by the news. I had great respect for Glenda, both as a trainer and as a person. She will be sorely missed.
Sometimes highly creative people have a dark side too and depression can be very hard to overcome from the inside without help. I don't know if this was the case with Glenda or not. But perhaps her death can be a reminder for me to offer help to friends when they seem down in spirits.
Thanks Charlie for blogging about Glenda.
Her other brother, Roberto, was one time Senator in Puerto Rico
She told me about her upbringing and the challenges, but it didn't appear to stop her from feeling happiness and sharing it with others. When she had issues with her stomach, she took charge and turned a strict Vegan, never once complaining where we went to eat if it didn't have many options for her. She was a problem solver.
She just emailed me last week, asking about attending MAX in SF and providing services as a hands-on TA.
None of this makes any sense. I suppose it seldom does, but with a woman like her...so vibrant and full of life, it is a tragic loss.
I will miss her.
I was fortunate enough to meet Glenda when i was only 8 years old when she became my Big Sister throught the Big Brother /Big Sister organization when she lived in Massachusetts. She was awesome!! I had come from a home where i was not supported by my own family and Glenda became like a mother figure to me. For 2 years she took me to camp and horse back riding. She never missed a visit with me. One of my fondest memories of her is her sitting around the piano and singing at camp surrounded by hundreds of other little girls, yet, i felt so special, as if i was the only one. I can still hear her singing her melodic rendition of "The Rose".
Glenda moved briefly back to Puerto Rico, and was unable to be part of the Big Brother/ Big Sister program. She could have easily forgotten me over the years, but she never did. She always remebered by birthdays/Holidays with a phone call or an Email, and when i told her i was pregnant with my first daughter she flew all the was from Illinois to come to my baby shower to surprise me. What a wonderful soul!
A few years after the birth of my daughter i called to inform her that i was getting married, and she immediately insisted that she fly in to sing at my wedding, and so she did. What an amazing honor. As she sang Josh Grobans "You Raise Me Up" i could see in her eyes that day, she truly was like my mom, raising me up, and giving me away.
Glenda was such as inspiration to my life on many different levels. It was her perseverance and strength that encouraged me to go back to college where i recently completed my masters degree, and even though she wasn't in attendance when i walked in commencement in May, i know without a shadow of a doubt, that if i had asked her to be, she wouldn't have thought twice about jumping on that airplane and sitting in the first row cheering me on!
Glenda, you are my forever love. I am and will continue to be a better women because i have been blessed enough to have you in my life. Soar on angels wings my love.
Your Sister,
Amanda Ruiz
Glenda was a terrific instructor and a great person and she will definitely be missed.
Reading her husband's obituary, I am surprised to see that her two older brothers, Luis (a very well known tv producer and personality) and Roberto (a tv personality and ex-senator), were not mentioned.
Rest in peace, Glendaly.
Glenda did an incredible job of training us (what she deemed experts) to become trainers along side her. I think we all learned a great deal from her regardless of the 'experts' label; not only at a technical level, but on a professional level in how to conduct oneself when presenting to an audience.
It was a great week in which some of us had lunch with her and discussed our passions in and out of work. Though I only worked with her directly that week she was the kind of person that made you feel welcome straight away upon our first meeting and always remembered our training class in conversations when I ran into her at various conferences over the years.
Glenda, your footprint in the Allaire, Macromedia, Adobe community will always remain. God speed.
My condolences to Vanessa, Luis, Paul and Lydia...
I lost contact with her after moving to the United States and I'm in total shock that she is gone and I won't see her until we all meet in heaven.
To: Lydia, Vanessa, Luisito, and Paul. She was a "Class Act", no one can ever replace her. Everyone she ever came in contact will always miss her.
I just can't understand why?
My prayers go out to her family and Husband.
God bless Glenda,
Matthew Fearnley
Boston, MA
marilyn
I'm still crying like a baby this morning, but I'm writting this because Gleanda would want me to be strong and pick myself up. She has sent all of us a valuble message, each of us will interpret it in our own way. This remimds me on the song "Stary Stary Night", this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you. Glenda is at peace with God, she is befriending the newcomers and making everyone feel loved and welcome, her pain is gone. She will remain in our hearts until we see her again.
My son came to me a bedtime and asked if God was mad a Glenda for taking her own life? I held him in my arms and said, Gelenda is and always has been an angel from Heaven, she just went home. God is never angry at us when we want to go home, she is loved.
I love you Glenda
I really didn't set this entry up to be a memorial wall for people from outside the technical community that my blog serves, but the fact that it became one over the past couple of months is both a testament to how big the news was to those who *knew of* Glenda, and a wonderful testimony to the legacy of love and friendship Glenda left behind for those who *knew* her.
Let's leave things at what's been stated to this point, and note as well a couple other links folks have offered to share pictures and other thoughts. Thanks to all who contributed to this point, and again, thanks Glenda for touching us all. You will be missed.
PS If someone reads this and feels some righteous anger at having been denied their chance to speak their mind, please, let that go. There's enough anger in the world. Turn your thoughts instead toward Glenda, and your energy toward your own loved ones. You never know when you may lose them.