I am shocked to read this because it came totally out of the blue. I've just now completed an online search to see if I could find out more and I did find the following obituary:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/idahos ... =184097497
It says that "Bill died February 3, 2017 at home while working on one of his many projects." The Hydroglove.com website message "The owner of the company passed away suddenly on Friday" must refer to Friday, February 3, 2017 if I have identified the correct obituary in the
Idaho Statesman. William "Bill" Sewell was 56, which is no age at all these days.
As others have said, Bill was not only a great entrepreneur but also a passionate historian of mid-twentieth-century diving equipment who always wanted to get every detail right. We corresponded about Skooba-totes suit measurements (I own an original suit) so that he could make his own Hydroglove suits more authentic. He was also a very generous man, providing me with space on his website to post my monographs on historical diving suits and then opening up another site with the Hydroglove name, Hydroglove.net, to host not only these suit documents but also the series of monographs about modern fins, masks and snorkels that he encouraged me to write. I was intending to add more data to this file collection during the coming week.
I bought my first Hydroglove suit when Bill began selling the product years ago. It came at the right time, when I was looking for exercise after undergoing surgery and decided to snorkel in the cold waters of the North Sea not far from where I live in England. I purchased another thicker version,sized XL to fit my fuller proportions, before Christmas 2016 and I'm just as delighted with it as I was with the first suit I bought from him. I hope it won't be my last. I will be "baptising" it in a month or two in the North Sea and I'll remember Bill, who I never met in person, while I'm doing so.