Flare Gun Forum

Dear ladies and gentlemen, friends and collector fellows, members of the flare gun forum,

The founder and initiator of this forum, our young friend Weidman Bemelmans passed away on the 19th of March 2012 unexpected for all of us. He was born on the 14th of Mai 1980.
With his enthusiastic interest in the field of flare guns, signal weapons and ammunition, he created a forum for international friends who were able to share knowledge, facts, opinions and happiness for this topic. This work was a masterpiece and the first time ever, that there was a base for signal pistol collectors to share facts and to find specialists and friends with the same hobby in this specific field.
Without his implementation of this forum, this network of specialists and collector friend’s wouldn´t be able in a such transparent and effective way, like we have found here.
As a physician in the Netherlands, it was his passion to serve the sick and ill patients and worked for to improve the health of the suffering people. I always have met him as a warm and friendly person, who never hesitated to help or to support me or other collectors.
We are all very deeply shocked and sad about this tragedy and want to keep him always in memory as the one who brought the international flare pistol and signal ammunition collectors together on one “round table” in this forum that was created by him.

I want to express my deepest condolence to his family and know that his work and efforts for the collector community won´t become forgotten.

Weidman my good friend, thank you what you have done for all of us, you have left us far to early, we will remember you always!

Lorenz

Goodbye, dear Weidman!
You have been a very creative character and the Kern family remembers very well our first meetings with you on gun shows in Arlon and Ciney where you shared a table with us when you started collecting and dealing flare guns. We discussed your phantastic idea to use new media in order to create a new and worldwide club of flaregun-collectors. You visited us at home and we got you into contact with leading flaregun-collectors in the US when we took you to Louisville, Kentucky, visiting the SOS-show. We discussed a lot, laughed together and had a good time. You have had all our support and we would have liked very much to continue our relationship with you, but sometimes a man´s destiny is incomprehensible. So only let´s say "thank you, Weidman" having shared some time together, even if it has been much too short! Items shooting stars into the sky have been your big passion, now you are yourself one of these stars in the universe and we will never forget you!
Farewell, Weidman!

Delphine, Frédéric and Wolfgang Kern

Hello members of the Flaregun forum,

I am Thomas Bemelmans, Weidman' younger brother. On behalf of the entire family I would like to thank you all for your warm condolences. All the messages expressed the kind feelings towards Weidman (weidman) and gratitude for starting this forum. Thank you for this, it is very touching to read messages from people from all over the world, who may have never met him, but shared a big passion with him.

From the start of his 'contamination' with the flare gun virus, as he called it, I have seen his interest and passion grow. He regretted that there was no world wide community of flare gun collectors, and after a few months of regret, he decided to take matters into his own hands and create this forum. Due to his busy day-job, he could not watch all the posts every day, but always, when I saw him after one or two weeks, he had a big smile on his face and said: Thomas, we have got 5 more members, and 30 new posts! He was very proud of this, and amazed by all the rare and nice pictures of flareguns from all over the world!

Thank you very much for all the kind words,
And (he would be angry if I did not say this) keep collecting and sharing!

Thomas

On behalf of the entire Bemelmans family

(ps. for information about the continuation of this forum, see the post: Who is going to run this forum?).