Jeff Lawson

It’s taken awhile to get past the shock enough to write this obituary. I had no idea he was ill. I had a text exchange with him in December about Linux but he said nothing about his health. I reached out to him to see if he had kept up with it since 30 years ago, he was always tinkering with a dual boot to play with it.

I watched the service live stream and the stories his cousin told were classic Jeff. His description of Jeff’s laugh and giggle were spot on. His comment about visiting, getting his taxes done and computer fixed at the same time, reminded me of a story Jeff told about an IRS mileage audit and pulling his favorite pen from his pocket (as an explanation as to why the entire mileage log was written with the same pen). I never really knew if he was teasing or if he really was audited. Several times over the years I’ve described Jeff as the person with the laugh that could belong only to one person. Everybody who knew Jeff knew his laugh. The giggle and the laugh were normally connected.

When I came to TG&Y HQ in 1981 I was just beginning my journey into the computer world. Jeff was always a smarty pants but if I had a stupid question or didn’t understand something, he would explain until I got it. Between TG&Y and AIG, we traveled a lot. When it came time to eat, I remember his policy of no “yard birds” or “bottom suckers”.

I did however know POS from the store side. I went to HQ because of my experience with POS in the store. Part of my job was to test the POS systems before software releases. Jeff was rarely wrong (my word, not one he would use). They had been working on a new release and during my testing, the sales tax wasn’t working correctly. There was a pattern. Something to do with (as I recall, it’s been 40 years) the sales tax dollar amount changing with each added item. Something like charging sales tax on an item, adding it to the item, then adding the sales tax to the previous amount with included the sales tax. David Bradshaw may remember. When I showed it to Jeff and explained what I thought was occurring, he laughed and said “No way.”

The next interaction came the next day when the next version was ready to test. Everything was working and the sales tax was good. I asked about the problem and was given an out of character, sober response suggesting my theory may have been correct. It’s the only time I remember he wasn’t “right”.

Jeff and Kathy moved to Atlanta at some point during the TG&Y transition. After it closed, I went to work for AIG. There was an opening for someone with Jeff’s skills. I had this habit of staying in touch with people and I knew how to reach Jeff. I told Robert B. and it wasn’t long before Jeff and Kathy were moving back to Oklahoma!

We had several road trips. There were usually several people traveling and if the trip was very long there was a lot of loud country music singing along with the blaring radio.

Jeff always had to drive. He also thought it was funny when in NY City, he was going home and I had to stay. I had barely learned how to hail a cab and was going to be staying there on my own. What I didn’t know is that he had a rental car which I thought he was turning in at the airport. Turns out, he was taking a cab to the airport and was leaving the rental car with me to drive back to Connecticut. As he handed the keys to me, he giggled. I was never one not to want to drive but that was absolutely the worst experience, getting across the bridge (I’m still not sure I took the correct route out of Manhattan) back to Connecticut. Where is GPS when you need it? Not in 1989, that’s for sure.

On one visit to NYC, we went to a baseball game. There was another person from our group but I won’t name him here in case he would choose not to be associated with this story. I was living in PA at the time and the NY team was playing Pittsburgh. We were with a client and would be sitting on the NY side of the stadium. I was duly warned to keep my mouth shut and not to root for PA under any circumstances. The fans were a bit on the rowdy side so I was not my usual self and kept my mouth zipped.

Jeff was driving. Out of nowhere he, mentioned we were really low on gas and should stop. The client, a native New Yorker, was suddenly in shock. Jeff kept jokingly saying something about just pulling over if we ran out. “This isn’t a place you want to be out of gas!” I don’t remember if we stopped coming or going but either way, he ( the client) was a bit on edge the entire time. Jeff just giggled on…..

TG&Y and AIG were family. The relationships from that time certainly had an impact, for the better, on my life. The list of those who have passed grows each passing day but the memories will be here forever!

RIP my dear friend!