The first thing I saw on the Internet when I woke up yesterday was that Molly Holzschlag had died.
Eric Meyer wrote a beautiful post about his memories of her. You can read it on his blog: Memories of Molly.
At the end of his post he wrote:
if you have treasured memories of Molly, I’d love to hear them in the comments below, or on your own blog or social media or podcasts or anywhere. She loved stories. Tell hers. -- Eric Meyer
So here it goes...
Like many web designers who started making things way back, I first became aware of Molly through her books and her work with projects like Web Standards Project (WaSP). I was a fan. I never thought I'd ever meet her or speak to her.
And then Twitter happened and that's where we became online friends. I'm pretty sure it was initially because of our shared appreciation for our orange cats.
Over the years, We exchanged comments on each other's posts, had a couple of random Zoom chats and ongoing conversations in DM. She was very supportive of me and I will always appreciate that.
My Only In-Person Molly Story
This was at least 10 years ago so I've forgotten some details. What I remember is that Molly was in Boston for a business trip and she invited Sarah Bourne, Char James-Tanny, (both of whom I had not met before) and I to visit her for lunch at her hotel.
As I remember, we decided to hang out in Molly's suite and talk for a while and then go to a restaurant for lunch. Once we were into some conversation, we decided it'd be better to stay there get room service instead.
We all ordered cheese sandwiches with fries. It seemed a reasonable choice. What they brought us were the largest, fanciest, most over-the-top cheese sandwiches that have ever been created. Ever.
Hilarity ensued as we tried to deal with these epic cheese sandwiches. They were as delicious as they were massive. Something about truffle oil, I think? That might have been the fries. Whatever was going on, it was really good. And those sandwiches were comically large. And we laughed a lot.
That day the four of us talked about everything - life, work, and the whole universe. My memory of it, aside from the aforementioned ridiculous food, was really appreciating that moment I shared with three amazing humans and the friendships that came of it.
That's it. That was the only time I saw Molly Holzschlag in person. We did continue to be online friends and often joked about those sandwiches.
Farewell, Mols. You will be missed.
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