The Qmodem program, brought home on some random 3.5 inch floppy, allowed me to connect to local BBSes and started my journey into networking computers. Now I have a PhD in CS and I spent more than a decade deeply caring about the Internet, networks, and network research. Without the start given by those BBSes, my path could have been very different! I am very sorry for your loss, and I hope the fact that he made a random teen's life better is some comfort.