Most of you probably don't know who he was. I met him in the early 2000s via an on-line community called Webheads, which connected ESL educators from around the world.
Vance was the glue that brought that community together in the late 1990s and held it together for 20+ years.
If you view some of these past articles, you can see many of my interactions with Vance and the way he archived those interactions on his on blog. Below is a screenshot from an article he wrote in 2019 following the 21th year on-line reunion of some Webheads members.
As with many people who I've met on-line and grown relationships with over many years, I only met Vance once, which was a few years ago when he was in Chicago for an event. I treasure that memory and the way he always made me welcome, even though I'm not an ESL educator.
I encourage you to visit Vance's Facebook page and read the testimonials that have been posted as people are learning of his passing. Here's one post that provides links to many archives that will enable you to learn who Vance was and what he accomplished.
I often wonder if my own work and archives will remain available to people in the future. I ask the same question when I think of the much larger body of work that represents the life of Vance Stevens.
A few weeks ago I wrote about using the Internet Archive to find posts which have broken links. Here's a link in the archive to the post Vance wrote in 2019 following our reunion. As long as the archive is available, so will the legacy of Vance Stevens.
12-6-2022 update - a memorial to Vance Stevens was held on ZOOM - watch it here
In the video a PDF tribute to Vance was mentioned - It's in the Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language - open the pdf from this page.
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