Her message is in the less-visited "Letters to Avsim" forum, so I thought I'd post a link here in case you wanted to stop by.http://forum.avsim.net/topic/321444-clayton-thomas-topke/

I do not know who he was, and what he did but it's truly amazing that PMDG has put his name on both sides of the aircraft showing he was someone very special.

I hope he'll fly in the higher sky...very sad indeed...

Bas-Clay was a long-time Beta tester at PMDG. While the chances we might actually meet any of our beta testers face-to-face is rare, we tend to keep folks around for quite awhile, and we get to know them well.Clay was a vocal member of the team who had a significant amount of flying experience and a great sense of humor.In the years he participated, Clay only hinted that he was sick a few weeks before he passed. In typical Old-School Airline Captain Style, he understated the seriousness of his illness- and we were all surprised and saddened to learn he was gone.We thought adding his name to a flagship product like the NGX was the least we could do.

I think that is a great thing to do from PMDG to make the NGX in memory of Clay.

Bas-Clay was a long-time Beta tester at PMDG. While the chances we might actually meet any of our beta testers face-to-face is rare, we tend to keep folks around for quite awhile, and we get to know them well.Clay was a vocal member of the team who had a significant amount of flying experience and a great sense of humor.In the years he participated, Clay only hinted that he was sick a few weeks before he passed. In typical Old-School Airline Captain Style, he understated the seriousness of his illness- and we were all surprised and saddened to learn he was gone.We thought adding his name to a flagship product like the NGX was the least we could do.

Robert-PMDG are respect developers, but I fail to see one developer put a 'memorial texture' on their product. When Vin found out about my dads passing (which he didnt even hint about, hence we believe he did not know), he put a kind offer to make a repaint in memory of my dad for me to fly. I don't want to make this topic based all on me, but PMDG, there are forums I come and go from, some im sick of due to the developers disrespect. You guys are different, my hat goess of to you, Robert, and your entire team.It makes you even think, why didn't we do this for him at the time he was here? We didn't know, were only human, bound to make mistakes.Keep it up guys, its the small things that get noticed. Clay would be proud :(

Thank you Sir Randazzo for the explanation. I joined around the time the thread that he passed away was posted. I did read it, but didn't really know what he did and who he was. Thank you, his name will probably mentioned in the future and now I know why his name is on the side. It's wonderful PMDG does such things.