Remembering my friend and mentor Jeff Brown

15-Sept-2022 - 6:00 AM CT

Please bear with me a moment. This is a long story that does have a point. There is a reason I’m posting this today. It’s been a long night of introspection for me. If you don’t have time to read it all, jump to the punch line at the bottom. Bottom line up front: You matter, and you can have a positive impact on other people’s lives, even if you don’t know you made an impact.

Last night around 9:30 PM CT we lost one of my longtime and closest friends, Jeff Brown. When I was a young “kid” at my first real programming job back in the early 90s, I was sometimes belittled by other programmers where I worked. These folks had advanced degrees in computer science and similar studies, and I was just a “dumb kid” still working on a degree in psychology and philosophy with a little personal programming experience that started when I was in my early teens.

Jeff told me to not listen to those people. He told me I was as good as any of them and had raw talent. He took a TON of his own time to turn that simple, raw, and unrefined, talent into actual marketable skills that mattered. He pushed me to be better. He taught me C (a quite complex programming language for a noob like I was back then). He taught me how to deal with customers, project managers, and leadership. He taught me to have confidence in myself no matter what others said or how they might judge me. When those very same critics started coming to me for advice (and eventually jobs when I moved on from that company) I knew I owed much of that to Jeff’s patience and care in teaching and mentoring me.

Jeff made me laugh. He had this dry sense of humor that was infectious. He once lobbed a snowball over my cube wall and into the back of my monitor. This was back when monitors were huge and were basically big cathode ray tubes… it pretty much exploded after snowball impact. He was aiming for me and missed. I was a little upset at first, now not having a monitor (I took his), but it wound up being hilarious and something everyone remembered for many years. (It was not funny to our manager or the company, though.) He could make out of the blue statements that you had to think about and suddenly you would just burst out in laughter. He could crack me up at the most embarrassing times (such as during meetings).

He did make me scared to go on vacation, though. On one occasion when I was out, he took all the stuff out of my cube and put it in our boss’s office. He printed up a letter that said my desk had been moved. I looked ALL OVER the freaking building for my “new office”. Finally, my boss felt pity on me and told me what was going on. I got my stuff back, but I had to re-build my keyboard as he and another friend had moved all the keys around on it. I remember when he wanted a bigger cube. As anyone moved or quit around him, he would move the walls. I happened to go on vacation during this time and he moved MY walls. (That will teach me to take vacation.) Soon our boss was asking, “How did Jeff get a cube that is 3x as big as anyone else’s?” He did have to put the walls back.

He taught me to up my bowling game at the league level. He was a pro-am player with multiple sanctioned 300 games. He introduced me to the Ren and Stimpy show. (He was a HUGE fan and had log and powdered toast toys.) When he and Tonja had kids, I wondered who would have more toys. Jeff or the boys.

He was just that kind of guy. Passionate, giving of himself, devoted to his family and friends, and totally hilarious. He was not one to like compliments and believed (as I do) in humble confidence, not arrogance, in one’s own ability. He told me early on that someone will always know more than you (a core belief in the agile community). Just get used to it. It’s part of being a programmer. I can guarantee he was one of the top programmers in the area we live, yet he thought he was just average at best. He was wrong. (One of the few times he was wrong.)

About six months ago we were having dinner together and I told him how much he meant to me and how I would not be where I am today without him. I reminded him of the stories above, most of which happened over 30 years ago. I told him that much of my success is because of the impact he had on me and the time that he took to teach a crazy young kid. He blew it off and I told him, “It IS because of you, Jeff.” I reiterated that if it weren’t for the time, care, and encouragement he gave me, I might have given up and gone back to being a hardware tech and not have pursued software engineering and leadership to the level I have over these many years. I’m glad to have had the chance to tell him that before he died.

His loss grieves me more deeply than he could ever know. In the past few years that he was sick we only got to see each other a few times a year over dinner. He was not one for email or social media, so we only really talked when we got together face to face for dinner. We would just joke around all night talking about stupid stuff, old work stuff, and tech. I think our stupid tech and work talk bugged our wives, yet I cherish those moments together.

Most of you know that what I love most about my job is helping others. It is my passion. That passion came from what Jeff and others did for me decades ago. I feel driven to pay that back. I have and continue to pay that back. I don’t plan to stop.

Jeff mattered to me. He still matters to me. I owe him so much.

The point of this long story is to tell you that YOU CAN HAVE AN IMPACT. You may not see it now. You may never get to see it yourself. The way you treat and care for others could be LIFE CHANGING for them. (For good or ill.) LET YOUR IMPACT BE FOR GOOD!

I won’t get a chance to go and say goodbye to Jeff in person at the hospital today like I planned to, but I hope he knows how much he meant to me.

Jeff, my friend, you are so dear to me. No matter what you would say, you helped drive me to be a better person and to become the man I am today. For that effort, and well over three decades of friendship, I am eternally grateful. It blesses my heart and soul to know we shall see each other again one day. May God keep you in His care until we see each other again.

In all love and fond remembrance,
Vince Arter, Jr. - September 15, 2022