On June 24, 2022, Peter Russell passed away. He has been a co-founder of Joomla and he left memories in many members of the Community. In this article, Alison and Jennifer wanted to share some comments on Peter.

From Alison Meeks

My friend Peter Russell

By now you will have read many remembrances of Peter as the co-founder of Joomla. Mine is a little different.

While indeed as the others, Peter's contribution and Joomla over all has made a significant impact on the course of my life. I knew Peter differently.

Many years ago my friend Jen Kramer introduced me to Peter. Something like "you two need to know each other". Peter and I were fast friends from that day on and while we shared our love of Joomla, more often than not we weren't talking about Joomla at all. We were talking about rock music and fast muscle cars.
As it goes with our Joomla friends, time zone differences, such was the same here. Getting to have a chat real time was a challenge but we would work around it. It was the norm for us to drop new music finds or hot cars on each other's FB pages or in messages. It was always a treat to wake up to a new music discovery he'd found, or a 5 min video of some hot car running a fast track, engine screaming and tires burning. Another common enough message was, oh I've just found this "great bit of kit" for a cool J extension of some kind he'd found.

Oh mate I'm gonna miss you.

From Jennifer Marriot

When Brad brought Wendy and I on to Mod the Template forum right at the beginning Peter took us both in. We skyped every day dreaming up a showcase area to really promote Joomla, but most of all we had fun, cut up and talked music, cars, interesting people, photography, our families and lives. That friendship continued on through all of these years, and when my Pete had to have skin cancer removed Peter was right there virtually holding my hand, and when my older brother got melanoma he was again right there virtually holding my hand. Peter was a superb human being. Funny as the day is long, mischievous and also had a wicked temper. He was loved and I miss him.

I miss the daily music video drops. We loved to talk about Celtic Metal Fusion and Opera Metal Fusion and Richie Blackmore and he and my Pete talked endlessly about Tommy Bolen.

Peter Russell was a good man and taken far too soon from us.