Yesterday, we lost a member of our gym.
Truthfully, calling Jeff a member doesn’t feel right.
He was a friend.
A mentor.
A brother.
A father figure when I needed one.
I’ve spent most of today trying to figure out what to say.
Truthfully, I couldn’t.
I cried.
I stared at a blank screen.
I wrote something.
Deleted it.
Started over.
Because how do you summarize someone who became part of your life?
You don’t.
You just tell people who he was.
Jeff used to say:
“Some people will tell you I’m an asshole. Some people will tell you I’m the nicest guy they’ve ever met. Believe them both.”
And if you knew him, you probably laughed reading that.
Because it was true.
Jeff wasn’t fake.
If he liked you, you knew it.
If he didn’t, you knew that too.
He was stubborn as hell, opinionated about almost everything, and completely unwilling to compromise who he was just because it was easier.
I respected that.
One of my favorite conversations with Jeff was about retirement.
Actually, it wasn’t one conversation.
It was dozens.
I used to ask him about it all the time.
With everything he had accomplished and everything he had been through, I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just slow down.
He would entertain the idea for a minute.
Then the next day we’d be right back where we started.
Eventually, I realized something.
Jeff didn’t love business.
He loved people.
The business was just where he got to find them.
Even when he talked about work, he wasn’t really talking about work.
He was talking about his staff.
A family he met.
Someone he helped.
A relationship he built.
Retirement never stood a chance.
People were always the point.
The way he talked about his wife was one of my favorite things about him.
More than once he told me:
“If you think I’m a badass, wait until you meet my wife.”
And he meant it every single time.
The way he talked about his children and grandchildren was even better.
You would’ve thought he won the lottery every time he got them together.
Nothing made him prouder.
He would take his staff to the casino, but the winnings were never really the point.
The point was being with them.
Looking back, that’s who Jeff was.
He loved being around the people he cared about.
He loved seeing them win.
He loved hearing their stories.
He loved building relationships.
If you were lucky enough to get brought into his circle, you quickly realized something.
You weren’t really a friend anymore.
You were family.
Jeff had stories for days.
You could ask him a simple question and somehow end up getting a lesson about life.
A lesson about failure.
A lesson about getting back up after life knocks you flat on your back.
And life knocked him down more than once.
He had incredible highs.
He had devastating lows.
He had every reason to quit at different points in his life.
He didn’t.
He kept fighting.
He kept rebuilding.
He kept showing up.
His health struggles were never a secret.
But there was always more going on than he let people see.
Not because he wanted sympathy.
Because he didn’t want people worrying about him.
He just wanted people to know he was still fighting.
And fight he did.
He jokingly called himself the mayor of the gym.
It fit.
He knew everybody.
Talked to everybody.
Welcomed everybody.
Even if he was locked into his workout, he wouldn’t leave without saying something to someone.
A joke.
A story.
A smile.
Something.
You didn’t always leave with advice.
But you almost always left smiling.
He wouldn’t let you leave any other way.
I wish we had more time.
I know everybody says that.
But I mean it.
Because no matter how much time we get with the people we love, it never feels like enough.
There are some people whose absence changes a room even when the room is full.
Hell, Jeff filled the room.
The gym will keep going.
People will keep working out.
Life will keep moving.
But something feels different now.
And everybody who knew him feels it.
There were plenty of days Jeff wasn’t at the gym.
So eventually I’ll get used to not seeing him walk through those doors.
But Jeff will always be here.
In the people he loved.
The people he helped.
The people he believed in.
The laughs he gave us.
A lot of us are better because we knew him.
I know I am.
A man with respiratory issues breathed more life into people than he’ll ever understand.
And I think that’s one hell of a legacy.
RIP Jeff.
You’re truly going to be missed.
