This seems to word for me. Replace your "mail code" where I exec ('sleep 60')

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use CGI;
use Errno qw(EAGAIN);

my $pid;
my $page = new CGI;
print $page->header(),
    $page->start_html();
    FORK:
    {
        if ($pid = fork())
        {
            print <<HTML;
<CENTER>
In the parent process<BR>
HTML
            print $page->end_html();
            exit;
        }
        elsif (defined $pid)
        {
            print <<HTML;
<CENTER>
In the child process<BR>
HTML
            print $page->end_html();
            close STDIN;
            close STDOUT;
            close STDERR;
            exec ('sleep 60');
            exit;
        }
        elsif ($! == EAGAIN)
        {
            print qq(Re-doing fork\n);
            sleep 5;
            redo FORK;
        }
        else
        {
            die qq(Can't fork: $!'n);
        }
    }
[download]

Hope this is of more help than the first posters comment. We all had to start once