Majicman Notes

I want to de­scribe the spe­cial qual­ity of his friend­ship. He took the most se­ri­ous and ac­tive in­ter­est in the lives of those within his ken. It takes time to do what he did, to an­swer every call, make your­self avail­able, re­ally lis­ten. “At­ten­tion is the be­gin­ning of de­vo­tion,” the poet Mary Oliver said. That is what he gave. He drilled down, re­duced prob­lems to their es­sen­tials, dis­cussed con­crete ways out and through. His ad­vice was con­sid­ered, se­ri­ous. Loy­alty was cen­tral to his na­ture. Peo­ple con­fided in him, knew they could. The head of a New York cul­tural in­sti­tu­tion said this week, “You could share every­thing, and he would never trade on it. He was hon­or­able and dis­creet. As ef­fec­tive as he was at con­nect­ing and build­ing al­liances, he didn’t trade on what he knew. It was not trans­ac­tional.”

He wrote me once that “friendship is the medicine of life.”

He acted as if life was de­licious, and if you were lucky enough to be here, you had a kind of moral re­spon­si­bil­ity to have fun. Take plea­sure in your ac­com­plish­ments, ad­mit your mis­takes, face problems, ac­cept all the blows, but re­mem­ber how de­li­cious it is.

Peggy Noonan on Vernon Jordan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-loses-a-wise-man-11614901935