Telegraph Road

I woke up this morning with Dire Straits’ song “Brothers in Arms” playing through my head.  I had heard the song recently, and it resonated.  There’s something so sad about all of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler’s music–beautiful and sad, even when it's joyous and celebratory.  It touches those own sad chords in me.  

When I was a child growing up in Zachary, Louisiana, northeast of Baton Rouge, it seemed we were always driving to Texas.  My dad’s mother and grandparents lived southwest in the black-dirt farmland, his father and those grandparents northwest of Houston in the hills, gullies, and ranchland of Central Texas, and my mom’s parents lived northeast of Houston, in the piney woods.

When I was very young, the road to Texas was mostly a two- or four-lane highway through long stretches of woods lining the road and permeated by bayous with green swamp water often visible from the windows of the car.  Every now and then we’d hit a little town with little wooden houses, and sometimes a big fancy brick house.  I was always excited when we hit Houma, Louisiana, and I saw the sign for the Jim Bowie house.  I would beg for us to stop and go to the museum, but it was always closed when we drove by, and my dad always said we didn’t have time and would laugh at me.  I had heard all the tales of the Alamo and of his knife, and I wanted a Bowie knife.  I had no idea that he was a slave trader and killer–my head had been filled with tales of adventure that left out all the facts, and I absorbed the hero-worship.

There wasn’t much to look at for a little kid, and it was a long drive, usually taking 8-10 hours.  I watched out the windows and let my imagination run free.  Or counted billboards. 

Eventually, the highway was supplanted by an interstate, and the trip shortened to 5-6 hours.  We bypassed all the little towns and most of Houston, only stopping for gas, usually at a Speedway near Vidor-Orange-Beaumont, sometimes getting a burger, but for the most part, just driving as fast as we could to the little towns where my grandparents lived that had been bypassed by interstates and the progress of the 20th century and were becoming museums themselves.  Our destination was always to visit with the old people in the old towns out in the country.

Years later, Christmas 1983 or 84, I was driving with my mother and husband, Jim Milles, to my mother’s family home in Magnolia, Texas.  We were driving at night, and my mom was a talker.  One memorable time she had talked non-stop for the whole 5-hour trip about one set of drapes she was designing for a client.  It was a tour de force that Jim and I still laugh about, but at the time it was a kind of torture.  We had found that the best way to travel with my mother was to play music that we could all listen to, and one of the good things about my mom was that she loved music and was very open to hearing new music.  

On this trip, we were listening to the radio, and had found a station that was playing one good song after another, and we were all having fun.  The traffic was light, and we had just approached Houston on a Sunday night. The lights of the city were shining, and the skyscrapers of downtown soared into sight. That first glimpse always took my breath away. After hours of nothing but dark countryside and interstate exit signs, the emerald city was before us.  And beyond that, our destination, my favorite place in the world, my mother’s parents’ home, with a perpetual fire in the fireplace, deep in the piney woods, 300 acres of forest and lakes that was our own private paradise.

Right at that moment, Dire Straits' “Telegraph Road” came on.  My mother stopped talking.  The song has a long, slow instrumental build-up, and my mother was all in from the first note.  We all were.  Jim was driving, and we were mesmerized.

Then came the first words: 

“A long time ago, came a man on a track

Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back

And he put down his load where he thought it was the best

He made a home in the wilderness

He built a cabin and a winter store

And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore

And the other travellers came walking down the track

And they never went further, no, and they never went back”

My mother caught her breath, and I could hear her thinking with every word, that this was her personal history being told in a song.  Her grandparents and parents had settled in these piney woods, built a cabin, dug lakes, manned the only store, raised and butchered animals to sell in the store, built roads, surveyed the land, and helped make a town.

The rest of the song told the whole story that my mother had witnessed from her childhood to her current middle age:

“Then came the churches, then came the schools

Then came the lawyers, and then came the rules

Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads

And the dirty old track was the telegraph road

Then came the mines, then came the ore

Then there was the hard times, then there was a war

Telegraph sang a song about the world outside

Telegraph road got so deep and so wide

Like a rolling river

And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze

People driving home from the factories

There's six lanes of traffic

Three lanes moving slow

I used to like to go to work, but they shut it down

I've got a right to go to work

But there's no work here to be found

Yes, and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed

We're gonna have to reap

From some seed that's been sowed

And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles

They can always fly away from this rain and this cold

You can hear them singing out their telegraph code

All the way down the telegraph road

You know, I'd sooner forget

But I remember those nights

When life was just a bet on a race

Between the lights

You had your head on my shoulder

You had your hand in my hair

Now you act a little colder

Like you don't seem to care

But believe in me, baby, and I'll take you away

From out of this darkness and into the day

From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain

From the anger that lives on the streets with these names

'Cause I've run every red light on memory lane

I've seen desperation explode into flames

And I don't want to see it again

From all of these signs saying, "Sorry, but we're closed"

All the way down 

The Telegraph Road”

My mother had seen the country road that led to her parent’s road–Beyette Road–named after her family–turn from a narrow 2-lane in the woods with only a Lone Star Feed sign as a marker into a 4-lane road with traffic lights and businesses and even six-lanes for part of the road, with a bridge bypassing the little antique shop she liked, which soon disappeared.

She had seen her mother and her mother’s friends go from working in the little country store in town to driving into Houston to work at the fancy Sears in the rich part of Houston, and then when the traffic got to be too much, and my grandmother’s friend died in a traffic accident, to my grandmother not driving to Houston at all and tending graves of her loved ones as her main occupation.

Instead of mines and ore, she had seen the piney woods cut down for lumber, and the main business of town being a sawmill.  Until it was no more.

I could feel my mother thinking and remembering all of this as the song played on, and she sat stunned into silence.

It’s a 14-minute song, symphonic in its scope and drama, soaring at times, and then fading away at the end.  

The song played as we circled outside of Houston and ended as we came to the road leading to my grandparents.  We turned off the radio and sat in silence the rest of the way, turning off the highway onto Beyette road, driving on the gravel road through the pine trees, over the bridge and up the long red dirt gravel driveway twisting through pines, with lakes on either side, until we arrived at my grandparents, with smoke rising through the chimney.

Telegraph Road

Alarm Clock, 2/12/25, United States of Derangement

When the alarm goes off on my cell phone, the sound lingers, sometimes for hours, after I’ve turned the sound off.  It’s like a ghost effect of digital sound.  That didn’t happen back in the day of analog alarm clocks–the sound was done when it ended.  It’s like those photographs on the cell phone that shift while I look at them, where I see movement, even though it’s a still photograph.  Digital ghost effects.

When I graduated from Zachary High School in 1976, my grandmother Eloise Beyette, my mother’s mother, gave me a radio alarm clock to take to college with me.  It was my first radio alarm clock, and it was fancy.  A big Zenith with stereo sound.  I loved it, and I loved the way the radio sounded.  Most of all, I loved that the alarm could be set in 20-minute increments.  That’s the feature I used the most.  I took 20-minute naps all through college.  My grandmother’s gift trained me so thoroughly that after a while I could take a 20-minute nap without setting the alarm.  My body shifted automatically into wake-up mode at 20 minutes.  I’ve retained that ability throughout my life.  A lingering body knowledge.

My grandmother, who I called “Grandma Cecil” all her life–Cecil was her husband’s first name, and we called him “Grandpa Cecil”--for reasons that must have made sense to my tiny child’s mind, and the name just stuck–it was years before I knew their actual names–my grandmother bought this magical alarm clock at Worthley’s Appliances in Tomball, Texas, where she bought all her appliances, and where she carried a credit, probably all her life.  Money was precious and rare in ways that were elemental, local, and deep in the bone. This vast global world of digital money and easy credit in an amorphous cloud of unknowing with its illusory wealth and insatiable greed did not exist yet, was only a wisp of a dream, a faint, unimaginable desire for things to be easier, more prosperous, more comfortable.

After all, they had a home.  They had land, over 100 acres of piney woods with a creek fed by a natural spring and ponds carved out of the land and filled by the spring.  Red dirt and pine trees and lakes and rivers, gardens, deer, bobcats, squirrels, and the occasional panther.  And always fire ants and copperheads.  Sometimes coral snakes, water moccasins too.  Taking care of their land and their home and their family, cooking, cleaning, growing food, fishing, that’s what it was all about.  They had their own well and water tank, which they maintained.  They built bridges over the creek when it crossed pathways through the woods.  They selectively cut trees for lumber and maintenance.  They had minnow tanks, catfish ponds, and a mushroom cellar.  They had a deep freeze off the back of the house.  They filled it every year by purchasing a cow, which was slaughtered for them.  They had a pantry filled floor to ceiling with canned goods my grandmother canned from their garden–green beans, pickles–dill and sweet, tomatoes, peaches, pears, okra, beets–the best beets ever–a cornucopia of sparkling colors in mason jars stacked high and orderly.

They had the kind of wealth that rarely exists now.  But they didn’t have much money.  It was a sacrifice and an accomplishment for my grandmother to give me that radio-alarm clock, and I am eternally grateful–a legacy that lingers.  It shaped me, literally shaping my sense of time, and giving me a deep sense of my value and how loved I was and how my family was with me, even if our lives and destinies were quite different, that they were somehow always with me.

As I watched and pondered Kendrick Lamar’s half-time show, which they would’ve watched on their big old console Zenith TV if they were still alive and such a TV were still operable, and which they would’ve shook their heads at in total bewilderment, as I watched his operatic performance and many videos dissecting its symbolism, the music and images lingered, playing in my mind over and over.  Uncle Sam looking and sounding deranged and dissociated and completely out of touch and out of sync with what was actually happening–an old, ineffective, Uncle Tom-like, accommodationist, reactionary man.  Kendrick Lamar crouched in a warrior stance almost mumbling to himself in a rapid fire incantation, like a shaman, not meant to be understood except by the initiated, calling forth his people, emerging from under the car, and swarming.  Kendrick Lamar advancing forward down the field, defying the game, like a panther coming straight at you.  So much himself that he couldn’t be denied.  So much forward momentum that he couldn’t be contained.  Naming and describing the game and defying the game in the very act of playing it.  Sounding the alarm with a lingering effect.

The United States of Derangement.

The First Time I Went to Charlie's Home

The first time I went to Charlie’s home it was early dusk, almost completely dark,

but still with a little light.  I drove up the steep hill on the narrow, winding street in

the heart of town, wondering why they had no sidewalks and instead had steep,

rock-studded concrete ditches on both sides of the road with no shoulders, and how

people who lived here had to drive this crazy street every day, and why did

they make it so hard? 

I was looking for his address.  He had told me the cross-street to look for and

other landmarks, and there it was, tucked into a corner of sorts, with a very tall,

pine tree next to the driveway.  It had a Biden-Harris sign nailed way up high–

how could anyone reach that high to put it up?

 

The driveway itself was a strip of narrow asphalt sharply curved around a large

mound covered in jade plants and a wild array of succulents.  I saw his silver

Nissan Leaf parked between some trees on a dirt off-shoot. The front yard was

a profusion of trees and plants, hard to see distinctly in the dark, but lush and wild.  

It was a house I had noticed before and never knew quite what to make of.  It was mostly hidden and not showy like a lot of the houses in the neighborhood.  All you could really see was the front wall–a huge multi-paned window–and a bit of the side of the house.  It was the old Del Mar style of board-and-batten construction, a style I’d never seen before I moved to Southern California, but ubiquitous here.

As I pulled into the driveway, all I could think was, “how will I ever back out of here?”  I would be backing out into a curve on a dark street, a short distance from an intersection.  In the dark!  To do it once was one thing, but who would purposely live with this kind of driveway and do this everyday?  That’s what I was thinking.  “And just what did this dinner invitation mean anyway?  What were his intentions?  How did he see me?” It was all a mystery to me.  But exciting.  At last something intriguing was happening.  I was full of wonder.

I pulled in, not quite sure how far to pull in–I could see a lot more driveway ahead.  The house had small round lights all around the roof, and there was a light from the patio and a room with french doors.  And there was Charlie!  He was peeking over a tall picket fence between the patio and the driveway gate–his curly white hair gleaming in the light and a huge smile on his face.  He’d been watching me. All my worries and thoughts about the driveway, the street, the dark, what I was doing there, and his intentions were completely gone.  He welcomed me with such warmth and enthusiasm, I felt like I was home.  He welcomed me home.  

He told me to pull up further into the driveway–meaning it would be even harder to get out!  “Let’s go around front,” he said, showing me the way.  We walked on a narrow brick path through the flower bed against the house and the bushes and trees and gardens in the yard, and up some wooden steps and through a glass-paned door into an old world-style kitchen and the wonderland of Charlie.  The kitchen looked like ones I’d seen in the Handmade Houses book my friend Michael had given me years ago.  Lots of wood cabinets and open shelves.  Small but efficient, just the way my mother always said a kitchen should be laid out so that everything was close at hand.  I felt like I had walked into a hippie’s house in the 70s, and I actually had, and I loved it.  

He had made soup.  In those days, he was getting most of his meals from a Jewish food service for older people.  I’d been told by our friend Carol, who introduced us, that he wasn’t much interested in food, and I was surprised that he had invited me over for dinner and offered to cook and didn’t want me to bring anything, but he had, and here I was, and he was proudly describing what he’d done to the soup to make it better, and it really was good.  He had also made a good salad.  And there was dessert. He was putting on quite a show.

It was a cool, fall night, like tonight, sometime in late October or early November, before Thanksgiving.  It was a soup night.  He had a fire going in the fireplace in the living room–a round brick fireplace surrounding a cast-iron stove.  We sat at his antique round oak table, where he’d already laid out the dinner settings.  

The lights were muted, the air was soft and cool, and he smiled and talked to me the way I’d always wanted someone to smile and talk to me.  Sitting under a floor lamp, his curly white hair glowing, he read to me in a quiet, strong, melliflous voice–a beautiful story from House of Rain by Claude Childs about crawling into a cave and discovering an almost perfectly preserved ancient Native American dwelling. When he finished the story, we sat quietly together in awe, without speaking for awhile, just taking it all in.  “Here, you take the book,” he said, “Read it to your students tomorrow.”

On the hour, a ship’s bell rang, startling me. He pointed out the brass ship’s clock on his wall, from his father’s days in the Navy.  At other points, his cell phone rang with a loud “aooogah,” from his days on submarines.  Our whole conversation punctuated by ship bells and aoogahs, we talked and talked, about our marriages, our moves, pivotal moments and people. We discovered books we’d both read, like Robert Johnson’s We.  He told me he had met Robert Johnson, who helped him when his first marriage ended.

I looked around the kitchen and living room, taking it all in.  “What’s this?” I asked about a little wooden bear hanging by cords on the wall by the stove. He shrugged, “I think it’s a toy of Anna’s from her childhood?”  “That’s really cool,” I replied, “I can’t quite figure out how to make it work–maybe it’s supposed to slide up and down the cords?” He wasn’t sure, “Maybe it doesn’t work anymore.”  “Well, I like it,” I smiled, “and it’s cool that you have it after all these years.”  

The house was full of memories and unexpected treasures–an archaeological trove. He gave me a tour, talking about each room and his life. We looked at all the family pictures on the walls and his son D’avid’s paintings of Native Americans and angels. It was all dark and all extraordinary and looked like the magic kingdom to me.  

We talked about Thanksgiving, and neither of us had plans, so I invited him over, and he said he’d come and would bring mashed potatoes.  And the next night we’d see each other at Carol’s, just like we did every night.

When it was time to go, I told him I was concerned about backing out of the driveway.

He laughed, “Don’t worry.  I’ll guide you.  It’s easy.  Just pick a side, and only look at that side. I’ll watch the street for you.  Pick a side!”

I did just what he said, and he guided me out, and it was easy.

I drove home in wonder, still not having any idea what that was all about.  I couldn’t read him at all.  But I was happy and knew we were friends and that I would be back and get to know him better and that it would be magical.

That night I dreamed that I was welcomed onto the property by a woman with long white hair and ushered into the backyard to an open hut where Charlie was seated next to a dark-haired woman, and they all 3 motioned for me to come sit by him.

This memory is with me all the time, and I feel it especially every night at dusk in the fall.

Visiting Old Faithful with My Dad

In July this year, I went on a bus tour with my dad, stepmother, part of my family, and some wonderful people from South Louisiana.  We left Zachary, Louisiana, on July 1st, and drove through the midwest to West Yellowstone, Montana, passing through the Badlands, and driving down through the Grand Tetons and the Rocky Mountains, all the way to Dallas, Texas, where I left the group to fly home to San Diego on July 10th. We saw eagles and bison, coyotes and elk, and beauty beyond words.  

When we arrived at Old Faithful, the geyser was due to shoot up into the air in about 90 minutes, and we were all milling about close by the site.  I passed by my father, step-mother, and niece, and they said, "We're going for a walk.  You want to come?"  

"Sure," I said. "Where are we going?"

"There's a spot your father wants to take us to see."

"Okay, let's go."

A few minutes in, my niece and step-mother say they've changed their minds and are going to go back to the lodge.  

"Okay," I shrug, and my father and I walk on.

It's midday, and hot, very sunny, not many clouds, bright blue sky.  I have on a hat and half a cup or so of water in a bottle, and a torn achilles tendon, plantar fasciitis, and heel spurs, but okay, my father wants to see something and he just turned 89 and he's giving me this trip, and I've been sitting in a bus a lot for the past few days, so let's go!

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"Oh, it's just up the way here.  It's called "Morning Glory," and it's the most beautiful spot around here.  I always go whenever I come here."  

My father has been to Yellowstone many, many times leading tours.  I want to see what he considers the most beautiful spot, and I love morning glories--they're one of my favorite flowers.

We walk and walk.  It's hot, really hot.  I start sipping my water at longer intervals to make it last.  Surely, there will be a concession stand, the New Yorker in me thinks--ha!  No, no water bottles for sale, no water fountains anywhere.  Well, it can't be that far.  

We walk and walk and walk some more.  The crowds fade away.  We're passing fewer and fewer people.  We are on a semi-paved trail, and there are occasional maps that show the Morning Glory pool up the way, but none of them indicate distances.

Blazing sun, and no trees, no shade.  My dad is not wearing a hat, and he's turning beet red.  He's also wearing hard-soled dress shoes.  I'm wearing hiking boots with orthotics.  My injured foot does hurt, but not too bad, and if he can do it, I can do it.

He looks at me and smiles, "You know most people don't make it this far.  I usually can't get anyone to go with me."

Awright, well, I've gone this far.  I'm just afraid it's going to kill him.  I keep offering him water, but no, he says.  My hat? No. Okay.

At some point, he takes the water.  At another point, he accepts my hat, and I pull my shirt over my head.  

He says to me, "You might not think it's worth it by the time we get there."

"I'm here for the journey," I say.  "It'll be worth it."

"You might not like it that much. Maybe it won't be as good as I remember it."

"I'm sure it'll be worth it."

"It's a very beautiful place, the most beautiful place here."

It's a very long walk.  But we make it.  And here we are.

When we returned, we were informed that we'd been gone 2 hours.  We missed Old Faithful, but no, not really, when you think about it.

And my foot recovered just fine.  Still healing, but better.  

Towards the end of our walk, my father said, "Well, I might not do this walk again."  After the trip, I told him, "Next time we do that walk, let's each have a hat and bring more water."  We both laughed.

In Memoriam: Lacy Strohschein Doss, February 24, 1930, to February 26, 2022

Here is a picture of the first kindergarten class at First Baptist Church, Zachary, Louisiana.  I'm on the front row, the only girl surrounded by boys.  Susie Strohschein is on the second row with her head turned to look at Billy Kirkwood, or maybe her mother, who is in the back right-hand corner, wearing a plaid dress.  That's Mrs. Strohschein, my kindergarten teacher, second mother, and lifelong supporter and friend.

She was instrumental to starting the kindergarten program, along with Mrs. Creel, in the left-hand corner.  Mrs. Creel yodeled, and was also a great favorite.  But she moved when I was a kid, and Mrs. Strohschein stayed.  And stayed.  I have a hard time believing she is gone physically, and I know she will always be in my heart.  She helped form it!

She was a rock, a constant and secure presence in my life, from the moment my family and I landed on the shores of Zachary, Louisiana, when I was 3 years old.  For one thing, she was the church secretary when my dad arrived as a very young minister, and she helped him succeed and our whole family settle in and become part of the community.  She was devoted, loving, and loyal to my family, her family, the church, and always present.  

To me, she was Zachary, and she was the church.

As a young girl, what most stood out to me was her kindness and attentiveness and strength.  She was present with me in ways that many adults were not.  She paid attention, and she affirmed my interests. 

For example, pansies.

She had a beautiful patch of pansies in her front yard by the driveway.  One day when I was feeling particularly sad from childhood pressures, I stood gazing at the pansies, dreaming and self-soothing.  She came over and joined me and chatted with me about the wonders of pansies, how they looked like children's faces and came in such beautiful colors and how I could grow some myself if I wanted.  The moment became a touchstone of kindness for me that has guided me through the years.  I hope that I have carried the lesson forward and helped others like she helped me.

She also had a great swing set in her back yard, and a bench on her carport, where I spent many happy moments, chatting gaily with whoever was around.  I learned in these moments how to relax and enjoy one another's company, with no particular object in mind.  It was like the coffee breaks I remember watching her and other church secretaries and assistants take when I was a child, a way to just be.

She also had a strong, sharp presence and wit.  She didn't suffer fools, as they say, although she definitely nurtured children.  She was a beautiful, hard-headed woman, in the best way.

When I was going through my troubled twenties and moving away from Zachary, I always went to see Mrs. Strohschein.  Being in her presence grounded me.  Plus, she also fed me.

I see her in every one of her children, all of whom are beautiful and unique, strong people.  I see her in my family who she helped through challenging times.  And I will always see her teaching me to tie my shoes and build structures with blocks and write my numbers and the alphabet and calm myself and take naps and eat cookies in moderation and take a load off and sit and relax for awhile and kick off my shoes and enjoy life wherever I am.

Thank you, Mrs. Strohschein.  May your light shine always.

Obituary for Lacy Strohschein Doss

Sunday Morning on the Coast

Early Sunday morning walking along the coast and down to the beach between Torrey Pines and Del Mar, California...

In a small patch of land between the coast road and the edge of the cliff, I heard a bird sing, perched on a reed, so loud and clear that all other sounds ceased.  

I listened and made my way down the cliff, across a stream, across railroad tracks that shouldn't be there, and down to the beach.  A few people dotted the beach, here and there, setting up for the day.  A young couple was sitting and unpacking their food, the girl carefully unwrapping the yellow paper around her sandwich.  Just as she was starting to take a bite, a seagull swooped in across the surf and snatched up the whole sandwich right out of the wrapper, leaving her frozen in place, wide-eyed, and holding an empty wrapper.  The gull took the feast a few feet away to eat, fought off another gull, as we all watched in wonder and laughed, our eyes meeting, our words lost in the sound of the waves.

As I continued on my way, I saw a young father with his daughter coming down to surf.  He was wearing a black wetsuit and holding a short board.  She was small, maybe 3 or 4 years old, and wearing a tiny blue wetsuit with floaters on her arms.  He took her up onto his back, with her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, walked out into the surf, put the board in the water, lay down on his belly with her on his back, and paddled out.  The waves were high and active.  Good waves.  Lots of surfers.  And there they were, paddling out into the middle of it all.  He caught a wave quickly, and they rode it all the way in, with her squealing with delight and holding on tight.  They came to shore and went right back out to do it again. Flying across the waves, squealing with delight. Over and over.

A perfect Sunday morning.

Thank you, Gerald Cohen, and May You Rest in Peace.

 Gerald Cohen made it possible for me to move to New York.  I am eternally grateful.  

Gerry was the co-founder and CEO of Information Builders.  He gave me a job as a marketing writer, paid for me to move to New York City, and put me up in the company’s apartment at 34th Street and 1st Avenue.  Other people paved the way for me to make the big leap, but it was Gerry who made it real.  And welcoming.  But not easy.  I had to work for it, and there were obstacles, but I had a good salary, work that suited me, and friendly colleagues.  I met my future husband the first day on the job.

I had only been to the city twice before, three times if you count the time I flew through JFK to Tel Aviv.  I didn’t know anyone there.  I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, but I was ready, and on July 3, 1998, I packed up a month’s worth of clothes and my cat Brownie, rented a car, and drove in a heatwave from St. Louis to my new home high in the sky on the 21st floor of the Rivergate apartments on the East River.  On July 6, I walked into the offices on the 27th floor of 2 Penn Plaza, and I had arrived.

The fact that Information Builders--Gerry--hired me at all has always amazed me, and it amazes me even more now than it did then.  I had a Ph.D. in English and 2 years’ experience in corporate writing, and had written letters to Gerry and other leaders in the company explaining that I wanted them to hire me full-time and move me to New York.  Surprisingly, they did.

Ever since I heard of Gerry’s death, I’ve been wondering why, and I think part of the reason was that what was a big salary to me was nothing to him, and he could afford to give me a shot.  I clearly wanted the job and was enthusiastic and skilled, so why not?  But I also think that Gerry liked people, not just me, but people who put themselves out there.  Plus his company was growing and at an inflection point, and I brought an outside perspective and had a lot of energy.  Mostly, though, it was just Gerry being Gerry. He was brilliant, funny, unpredictable, unconventional, and unique. Idiosyncratic.  Stubborn.  He had his own way of doing things, and would let others play around the edges, but kept his stamp on everything.  I’ve come to appreciate those qualities more over time.  He was both creative and practical and loved the software, the company, the people who worked there, and the customers and what they did with the software. 

Gerry and his partners built a company that was a family.  I worked there from July 1998 to October 2002, and I still feel like I work there--in the way that you can move far away from your family, but they are always family.

My favorite memory of him was going to see Rocky Horror Picture Show on Broadway with Terry Cosentino from ibi and Gerry and his wife Pam, and watching the looks of delight on their faces.  Working at ibi was fun, and the fun started at the top.

Thank you, Gerry, for opening New York City to me, for creating a company like Information Builders, and for all you have done for so many people.  Your legacy continues in all of us.  

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=gerald-cohen&pid=197257686

https://www.ibi.com/blog/frank-vella/gerald-d-cohen-1935-2020/