It's been a while since I've been here, and also since I've communicated with him, so when Erin texted me this morning what had happened and that she was on her way to the memorial service, I had no idea. Ton of bricks.
This hurts. As I'm sure it does to all of you who have known him here for a long time.
I guess I first met him at the board meeting in Austin in 2007, but as we both lived there and hit it off, we began meeting up for lunch somewhat regularly whenever I was working in town. He must've called his own shots, at least as far as lunch was concerned, because no matter how spur of the moment it was, whenever I alerted him that I was working near home that day and wanted to know if he wanted to grab lunch, it was almost always a "yes." Not sure how many times we met up over the next few years, until I left.
He was everything you'd expect from his Hooky persona in person, really. All the same humor, great storyteller, never at a loss for words, charming and charismatic, and always gracious. He never minded filling me in on all his thoughts about UT, and amazingly never minded me filling him in about the coonasses from across the border. But actually, football talk probably made up less than 50% of our conversations.
In the years since I left Austin, I don't think I met with him again in person on any of my visits. Mainly I just communicated with him via text or facebook for the last few years, and that not as frequently as I now wish.
Damn.
I'd like to write something more poignant, and if this stuff is getting shared with his family or whatever, I wish I could elaborate with more eloquence in my usual TLDR style. I'm just a little numb right now. It's tough to process a world where I can't reach out to that wit and wisdom and find it readily waiting.
I sure wish I'd kept up with him more in the last year or two. Along with Utee94 and Erin, he's one of the Longhorns I've met multiple times in person, and despite how it may seem odd, I consider them friends well beyond mere internet acquaintances. I wonder if that would've surprised him to know, and I wish now instead of the infrequent and abrupt "Hey, what's up?" and "Hey did you hear about...?" that I would've told him I considered him a good buddy. No telling how many times I've mentioned him and utee/erin to my Longhorn wife. Not to go off topic (sometimes JCG liked to imagine he hated people doing that), but am compelled to tell the rest of you that despite prolonged absences, y'all are more than just names on a screen to me....and that goes triple for you, Erin and MM. This place means something to me. Y'all mean something. Hooky meant something.
Damn.