December 22, 1996

Dear Mr. Hartmen:

In response to your request  for feed back,  I can present the following
information.  I am acting on behalf of about one million people in the USA
with Parkinson’s Disease and in conjunction with the Parkinson Action
Network. As you may  know, Parkinson’s Disease,  is a slowly debilitating
disease which stiffens our bodies so we can not talk, move or take care of
ourselves. We are lead to believe that research is on the verge of  a  break
through on several fronts but more research dollars are needed.

I am trying to build a web page and supporting data base to electronically
establish a communication web for the PD community.

We have been able to build the web page but we now need a data base to
receive information from the web page questionnaire. One of our members had
hear of Ask Sam and suggested  that I contacted your site.

In the process of downloading I lost the demo file and can not find it
searching “Sam.”

My question is can the engineers at ASK SAM create a data base and hook it to
the web page for us while working in a voluntary capacity?

The web page was established by a college student on my IBM Pentium using
microsoft access. The web page is located at :

http://members.aol.com/dales99846/PAN.html.

Another student volunteer has set up a data base using microsoft access but
when he tries to import the data to the base it arrives in a North south
column instead of spreading across the page in the correct columns. He is
converting the form responses, that we receive via email into text files then
importing the text files into Microsoft access.

Is there a possibility that your engineers could help us with a solution to
the problem.

Alternatively, perhaps your  Company could consider a corporate  contribution
to help us with our goal of raising research funds.

A contribution  could be made to the Parkinson’s Action Network  and
forwarded to the  address on the web page or forward the check to me and I
will forward it to the proper site.

If you would like to designate your contribution for research only may I
suggest a check payable to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation at

Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center
710 West 168th. Street
New York, NY 10032-9982

Thanks for your assistance .


Very truly yours,


A. Dale Severance
145 Hicks Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
718-625-2300 work #

cc: Toronto Listserv
For people with Parkinson’s Disease