Bubbalicious
I lost a friend over the weekend.
I wrote about it on my friend Aron’s blog, but since there’s no static link to entries over there, I’m going to copy my portion below, as well.
Bubba was one of the good ones.He was one of the most dedicated and hardest workers I have ever known, and it appears that a lot of people taking the time to remember him are focusing on that, so I would like to talk about Bubba as a person.
His kindness was bottomless. There are people who carry with them an aura of comfort and safety, wonderful people who make everyone feel at home, wherever they are. Bubba was one of those people.
Radio can be incredibly frustrating work. In a business overloaded with frayed nerves and tense decisions, Bubba never got impatient or raised his voice, and he always had time to stop and explain.
The radio industry is evolving very rapidly, and I believe every broadcaster has been stunned by sudden, drastic changes. When it was my turn for a job description overhaul, and I didn’t know what it meant or which way was up, Bubba was the one I talked to, because I knew he would be straight with me. I trusted Bubba.
I used to love to make him laugh. When Bubba laughed, it started at the bottom of his belly and then filled his whole body, one of those laughs that sounded like joy and life.
The problem with people who feel like home is that their presence is so warm and steadfast, you assume they’ll always be around. I left WIOD a year and a half ago, and I really regret not keeping in touch better, failing to send Bubba the occasional email seeing how he’s doing and reminding him not to work so damn hard. I am going to channel that regret into making sure there aren’t any more Bubbas, by telling people who have touched my life and then fallen out of touch how much they mean to me.
I think Bubba would have liked that.
You should still follow the link to Aron’s blog, though. Other people wrote good stuff.
I left out two things. One was that he and I had a running joke about how he speculated that I was moonlighting as a dominatrix in tall, tall boots. There’s no way to describe that without making him sound like a pervert, so you’re just going to have to trust me that it was funny and harmless – just another way to make me smile when he could tell I was having a bad day.
The other thing I just remembered – like everyone else, I knew he worked too much, and would call anyone and everyone for help before I called him. But one morning, I had a problem, and needed to call Bubba with a question. Practically before I could finish describing the issue, he cut me off with “I’ll be right there” and hung up the phone. And he was right there.