Thomas Eugene Foulks

Who was Thomas Eugene Foulks?

Thomas "Thom" Eugene Foulks worked as a disk jockey, editor of military base newspapers, manager/news director of AFRTS stations in Iceland and the Philippines, daily newspaper front-page editor, television videographer and news anchorman, TV public affairs director, and a politician. In the latter capacity, he learned that mainframe programmers who worked for the county could actually make a program do what the user wanted, not just what they thought it should do. About the same time, he decided he could run the county better than his boss, and wound up as Commissioner Chairman.

Thom's life is honored by having his name on a couple of public buildings, including the Pikes Peak Center public auditorium. Politics didn't interest Thom as a lifelong career—too many people recognized him in the supermarket checkout line. So he did not seek reelection, and began freelancing as a computer specialist.

Then came an Apple II, a clutch of TRS-80s, modems, operating a Bulletin Board System, and some computer userdom notoriety as author of the original operator's manual for TBBS.