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As many of you already know, DBB got off to an extremely rough start this week with sad news of the passing of one our own, Ron MarsHall. I wanted to pass along some additional information for those of you who would like to know, and judging by the tremendously blue comment section in Awesome Hog's post, I'm sure many of you would.
Visitation for Ron will be on Friday, Nov. 20 from 4-9 p.m. ET.
Location: James H. Cole Home for Funerals - Northwest Chapel
Address: 16100 Schaefer Hwy.
Detroit, MI 48235
The funeral service is on Saturday, Nov. 21 at 3:30 p.m. ET, same place.
You can also choose to make a donation in Ron's memory to help his family and friends pay for his medical and funeral costs. You can do so at this Go Fund Me page that is set up in his honor. It makes me so proud to see some of the generous support come from this community.
Ron was a prolific part of this Pistons home we have here, posting over 4,700 comments since he joined the community in February 2011 and an additional 50-some FanPosts that occasionally made it to the front page. To many of us, Ron was the Trade Machine magician and we know he liked a good GIF, and I particularly liked Mike Payne's words remembering Ron as 'Unshakably positive. Unshakably civil, smart and optimistic.' That is an honest, admirable description of a man Mike often openly and respectfully disagreed with on this site.
That's why I find the comment section in Awesome Hog's post so freakin' amazing and fell in love with DBB all over again. Different people from different states and even countries with different opinions all banding together and expressing raw emotion, genuine compassion for another human being they got to know mostly through thousands of his comments on the Detroit Pistons. We even had several long-time readers come out of the shadows to comment for the first time to send their condolences.
You might think it's hard to truly get to know someone online through a screen name and an X amount of comments, especially when the comments are more times than not on such a focused topic, like a sports team. Ron's personality really shined through, though, and that's a strong testament to how remarkably great this community is, because that's the case for a lot of our members. According to Ron's friend Larry Miller, Ron was "a very private person," and very private persons ordinarily don't comment three times a day for four years under their real name on a fan site with people they've never met before. Ron obviously took a liking to DBB and trusted us with the privilege to get a glimpse into his life, his eyes, his passions. I'm thankful for that, and he will be missed deeply by many.