Making Time

I mean, where do I even start with this guy. I briefly met Jody for the first time in a work meeting when I was still at an ad agency and he was pitching us NPR. Soon after, I reached out for an informational interview hoping to get his take on ad sales and his role there, which he took me up on. This was the first of seemingly infinite instances of Jody making time for me and countless others in work and life, doing so seemingly eagerly and without hesitation, even when I knew he had plenty on his own plate. What I thought might be a half hour chat ended up being more like an hour and a half (an early lesson that hanging out with Jody usually lasted longer than initially assumed).

Working with Jody at NPR for the next 10 years, we spent untold hours sitting within a few feet of each other in the office with only a low cubicle partition between us. One might think that would be enough time to spend with someone...nope, we also grabbed lunch together most days whether a sit-down at the Emerald Loop or a stroll for a quick grab and go to take back for an SDL as Jody always said ("Sad Desk Lunch"). Surely that must have been enough time to spend together...nope, a happy hour after work here and there turned into concerts, cubs games, Erin and I coming over to watch all 6 original Star Wars films in (timeline) order with the whole Moulton family, and so on. One of my crowning achievements was getting Jody to dress up in a squirrel costume for the ‘Animal bar bar crawl’ night during my bachelor party (see photo in the post by Mark Vanderhoff). Anyone would be lucky to meet one friend like Jody in their life, or to have one co-worker like Jody in their career, to have both rolled into one person was something I’ll always be thankful for.

Jody and I never explicitly brought up the word ‘mentor’ in terms of how we were connected. I think both of us preferred to not add that label as we were friends above all else. But looking back it’s clear to me that with me being 11 years his junior, I learned a lot from how Jody worked, approached life and cared for his family and chosen family. Over the time I knew Jody, I went from being an unmarried 30 year old to having a wife, house and children of my own. What may have seemed like discussions of small details and minutiae at the time (Jody chatting about a video game truck vendor he was hiring for Jack's birthday, recapping a call with Sally about upcoming vacation plans, scrutinizing choosing Cubs season ticket seats, him on the phone coordinating with the babysitter for pickup of Avery from school, discussing some logistics of the AV setup for a production at Jack and Avery’s school...) added up to much more for me; a window into what lay ahead and how one could balance responsibilities and fun to live a full life for one’s family and oneself. I never explicitly told Jody how much I valued and learned from having him as a friend that was a few years ahead of me down the path, and if I could talk to him again that would be at the top of my list to tell him.

Well, I certainly can't leave this post without talking about Jody’s connection to music and what it means to me. We (let’s be real, mostly Jody) rigged up a series of 1/8” cables connecting all the computer speakers across the 4 cubicles in our tiny NPR Sponsorship office so that we could all listen and take turns DJing. The amount of music listened to and discussed in that office was obscene, but the fruit of all that time are Jody’s spotify playlists that many now enjoy (e.g. Trendy Yacht Rock Habit). As we bounced musical suggestions off each other and curated playlists in the office, I learned quickly that Jody’s drive to constantly discover music included not only new releases from current artists, but also digging deep into the catalogs of artists from decades past. I appreciated this approach and took on board more than ever that when it comes to appreciating music it’s equally as important, if not more important, to look backward as it is to look forward.  Jody certainly had opinions he would give freely on music. I recall the moments in the office when he would be listening his way through the Lolla artist lineup ahead of the festival to contruct his infamous color-coded spreadsheet, and he would come across a band that he could only stomach listening to for like 15 seconds of three tracks before emphatically announcing they were being marked red (the lowest rank).  

When Thanksgiving arrives each year and December is around the bend, I always think of Jody because of the back and forth we would have every year over when it was appropriate to start listening to Christmas music. Whenever I or others were ready to have it on in the office, it was inevitably a little too early for Jody.  It's not that he didn't enjoy Christmas music, he just felt there was a time and place. Again, he was a man of musical opinions.

When I find a new band that seems solid or see a good concert pop up on the early warnings calendar, one of my first thoughts is still to mention it to Jody. I don’t know when that instinctual response will go away, maybe it never will, and that would be fine with me because it keeps his memory close.

I previously mentioned that Jody would regularly ‘make time’ for others, as in, take time out of his day. I realize that doesn’t quite capture it though, because to me Jody also seemed like he could literally ‘make time,’ as in create additional time in the day out of thin air somehow to show up fully in every facet of his life and for everyone in his life. This is a singular ability that Jody had and we all benefitted as we had so many good times with him while he was here.

I will always miss Jody. But more and more when I think of him these days it brings on a feeling of gratitude that our lives crossed paths in the first place, accompanied by a smile and a promise that I’ll still give him a heads up when I find out Parquet Courts is going to tour again...wherever he is.

Peace out homeslice.

~Collin