I Redesigned The Website of The Guy Who Bearhugged President Obama

7 points

14 years ago

If you've been following the news lately, you may have heard about Scott Van Duzer, a man who owns a pizza restaurant in Florida and is known for his philanthropic and charitable works. This past Sunday he received a surprise visit from President Obama, and warmly embraced the President in a 'bear hug' that became a popular story. (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/09/barack-gets-a-bear-hug/)

I heard about Scott Van Duzer's philanthropy foundation on the radio yesterday and was motivated to donate. However I visited his web site to donate, and was struck by how "1997 Geocities" his site looked like.

So beyond donating just money, I thought I would volunteer to re-design his site and offer my services as a "webmaster." I also noticed he hadn't registered his .com and .net domains, so I thought I'd register them with the intent to transfer ownership to him.

Old site: http://thevanduzerfoundation.org/

New site (doesn't have every page up yet): http://thevanduzerfoundation.com/

The thing is -- I can't get in touch with him. I've tried to reach him at his e-mail address on his site and call his phone number, but to no avail. I'm sure he's still pretty busy with the media cycle and at this point I figured I'd just wait until it dies down a bit before trying to reach out to him again, but I thought as a last-ditch effort, maybe someone on HN would actually know some way to get in touch with this guy.

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