i have read that old acct names get recycled after a year or so. is this true? who can be contacted to reactivate an acct name?

What happens to dormant accounts?
If you don't log in to your account for an extended period of time, we'll mark it as dormant. After nine consecutive months of inactivity, Google may delete the account and all messages within that account.

If your dormant account is deleted, we can't guarantee that your username will be made available again. Make sure to log in to Gmail regularly!

Source: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6563&topic=1504