For all the talk about megahertz, megapixels and megamergers, the wireless industry is really about people. It is about how people communicate with each other-and with the masses-about technologies invented by human beings.
Carol Foosaner was one of first people I met when I joined this paper in 1982. I knew her then, when she worked at the National Association of Business and Educational Radio, as Carol Benjamin. Carol later married Bob Foosaner, a former Federal Communications Commission official who left the agency the latter part of the ’80s to join a no-name startup called Fleet Call Inc.
For the past decade and a half, Bob Foosaner has guided Nextel Communications Inc. through one regulatory battle after another-usually with positive results. He’s a mostly behind-the-scenes guy who has contributed mightily to Nextel’s stellar track record in official Washington, the FCC’s 800 MHz decision being the latest coup. Foosaner likely will be called on again to help win government approval of the proposed Sprint-Nextel merger.
Bob Foosaner is a fireplug of a guy-from Jersey, I think. He loves baseball, having played it seriously during his youth. He was the star of the FCC’s old Private Radio Bureau softball team years ago, if I recall correctly.
These days, Bob Foosaner is championing the cause of his wife, Carol. It doesn’t get any tougher.
On Aug. 31, Carol suffered a serious horseback riding accident. She will never be the same. The Foosaners have been to hell and back, supported all the while by friends at and outside of Nextel. Carol has not given up, and I’m told there were some relatively positive developments in early rehabilitation. But no miracles. I’m also told Carol is now home, able to talk, eat and get around some in a wheelchair. Carol apparently attended Nextel’s annual dinner a couple of weeks ago. Those who know her say a lot has to do with Carol’s amazing spirit and that of her husband. Some wonder out loud whether Carol might pick up where Christopher Reeve left off. It is, after all, the stuff of super men and super women.
I haven’t talked with Carol Foosaner in ages, though I spoke briefly with her husband earlier this month at the Federal Communications Bar Association dinner. The annual event is a light-hearted affair in which the sitting FCC chairman pokes fun at himself and others. Michael Powell had plenty of material to work with this year. I wondered to myself how Bob Foosaner, having a good sense of humor and quick wit, was dealing with all the button-down types out for a good night of laughs. He looked outwardly comfortable enough, though I was apprehensive about approaching him. My guess is he probably liked being around his crowd that night. I hope so. We wish them well.
Someone else also has been on my mind lately. Ron Plesser. He died Nov. 18 of a heart attack at Dulles International Airport. He was 59. Ron was a lawyer at Piper Rudnick, where he specialized in privacy and electronic commerce policies. “He used to joke that he was an Internet lawyer before there was an Internet,” his law firm fondly recalled.
I remember Ron as an early champion of PCS, helping to secure spectrum for would-be competitors about to take on the cellular duopoly. After PCS got off the ground, I saw Ron now and then on Capitol Hill. He was a warm, gracious man to whom I took an almost instant liking. I will miss him.
