#27 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Friday May 14)
Good morning,
Let me begin by thanking you for indulging me in the personal story that follows and perhaps appreciate its content.
It is said that one makes one’s best friends in youth. I challenge that maxim based upon personal experience. Many of those closest to me have come into my life in the past 20 years.
One was Jay Mahoney. He died last week.
Jay and I met when we both worked at Legg Mason. He was a broker who successfully sold our funds to a number of institutions. He remained with us over the years. He never missed one of our annual investor conferences. In anticipating each March event, we looked forward to seeing him again. For me, most conferences began with a dinner with Jay and one or two other investors to catch up and share stories,
Those who knew Jay knew him to be “a character” (in a good way). When he entered the room with that beaming smile and that southern accent, he made everyone else smile. He was quick with a story or a witty comment, always gracious, with the manner of a southern gentleman.
One’s first impression of Jay might be to dismiss him as a simple “good old boy” of the south. If one were to do so, one would miss out on his wit and wisdom. Sure, Jay could “y’all” with the best of them. But his happy-go-lucky demeanor belied a depth of character that lay beneath. He was always inquisitive and welcomed the chance to reconsider his position. A case in point was when he and I took an after-dinner stroll around the campus of UNC, his beloved alma mater (he was a real partisan, unable to even speak the name of the dreaded “other place” in nearby in Durham). We passed the statue of “Silent Sam,” the statue of a lone Confederate private. He shared the story of its iconic status to generations of students. I said something to the effect that this was wrong and explained why. He processed this information for a few seconds, then responding quietly, “I suppose you’re right. It’s probably not a good thing.” Jay was living proof in these fraught times that there are indeed people with flexible and open minds.
Jay often regaled me with proud stories of his children, Carrie Alice and Joseph (including Jay and Joseph’s foray into oyster farming off the Wilmington coast!). I never met either child but I felt I knew them through the vivid word pictures Jay painted of them.
When Jake was looking at colleges, he expressed an interest in Carolina. Jay offered to meet us for dinner in Chapel Hill and give us the “special” Mahoney tour. For years thereafter, every time I spoke with him, he would start with the same question, “How’s my buddy, Jake?” He similarly expressed great interest in the exploits of Lauren and Brad; although he never met them. Jay similarly regularly inquired about people at our office. Jay was a great listener and a great source of support when it was most needed.
Jay was a big man, in personality, height and heft. He did everything in a big way, including imbibing—often to excess but rarely to sloppiness. He went through periods on the wagon, just as he went through periods of watching his weight. The last few years were tough for him, as he dealt with divorce, business setbacks and personal challenges. Yet through it all he seemed genuinely upbeat and positive about life.
Jay was a big fan of the Musings and regularly sent me brief commentary. He used to joke that he kept a dictionary by his side, so he could look up the “25-cent words.” A few days before his death, he teased me about adding another word he had to look up to the list—which he classified as “a 50-cent word.”
I will miss this guy—larger than life with a heart of gold. John Donne’s poem resonates this week: “…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”
And as any man's death diminishes us all, it is important to remember life...a life that Jay lived robustly, even as he fought health challenges fiercely. In the words of Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle in to that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
DO WE REALLY ONLY HAVE ONE MATCH?
A number of people have shared opinions about the TV show The One, the premise of which is a computer-based algorithm that matches DNA data from a huge database to identify “the one” person that is the perfect soul mate for the user. Besides all the logical holes in this (not everyone participates, not all people are in convenient/accessible locales, we are all separated by language and culture), it begs the question of whether there really is truly a “one true love.”
Mike Sfregola does not believe in the singular “soul mate.” Neither do I. If I didn’t work at Allen Matkins, if Sue Kroll didn’t walk into my office and give me Andrea’s phone number, if Andrea didn’t agree to go bowling at the end of our first date (yes, yes, I know…), we wouldn’t have ended up together. There is too much serendipity at play to ever be able to say that there is “only one.” If one of these things hadn’t happened, would I have never met someone else? And if I ended up with someone else because Andrea had never met, what would that mean for that “second best” relationship?
Mike assumes there are at least a dozen possible soulmates out there for each of us. If six don’t speak English and, therefore, are out, that leave six others, improving the chances, but still terrible odds. My gut is the numbers of acceptable mates probably are pretty darned high. Just take a look at the explosive growth of on-line dating apps. Swipe left and you discover your soul mate; swipe right and they’re lost forever?
Best, Glenn