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I Redesigned The Website of The Guy Who Bearhugged President Obama

7 points by nhashem ↗ HN
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.

5 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 13.4 ms ] thread
manuscreationis
You could try calling Big Apple Pizza in Fort Pierce florida and try to get in touch with him that way. Frame it that you want to talk to him about a donation to his charity but have been unable to contact him, then once you get a hold of him, explain what the actual donation is.

If you try to go through his employees by saying you want to redo his website, they'd probably be less susceptible.

Just a thought - good luck, that's a rather noble endeavor of yours.

patdennis
He's getting spammed pretty hard right now by the right wing.

They posted a few thousand one star reviews on his Yelp page, an I imagine they've been calling him nonstop.

I would wait a couple of weeks for this whole thing to calm down and try again.

gadders
That was a bearhug? I was hoping he was going for a suplex :-)

Mr Van Duzer sounds like a cool guy though.

Also for me the .com is redirecting to the .org.