Nearly 50 years without contact…

I hadn’t seen Jim Moody since he left McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma for a new gig at Hamilton AFB near Novato, Calif. around 1967.

I’d participated in Jim’s and his bride Georgia’s wedding. I fully believed I’d see them again within 10 years. I didn’t even speak with them by phone for nearly 50 years.

Charlie Williams, another Air Force bandsman, who stayed in Tacoma, sent me an email with Jim’s email address the week before Labor Day. I emailed Jim immediately.

I didn’t hear from Jim that day. So I thought I might not.

However, the next afternoon, when I checked my phone for missed calls, I saw a number I’d never seen before. With hope, I dialed the number.

A man answered. I said: I’m Ted Escobar. He said: “I’m Jim Moody.” We laughed and conversed for about a half hour, remembering our days in the band and catching up on developments since then.

Jim stayed in music after the Air Force and became an excellent drummer. He was in the U.S. Coast Guard band for seven years, and has worked in private music since then. He’s playing with a couple of groups in the Tacoma area.

The last time I looked for an AF buddy, he had died. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. So I invited Jim and Georgia to lunch with Pat and me at Snoqualmie Pass on Labor Day.

I grew up during my time in the Air Force. I was thrust into an organization of accomplished musicians from big cities all over the U.S. What I had learned at Granger High was chicken scratch compared to what these cats from New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Los Angeles could do.

In order for me to catch up, the commander made trombonist extraordinaire Donald A. Smith, from L.A., my teacher. Smitty was old school. He pounded music into me. By the time I left the Air Force, I was an equal.

But I knew there was no place to go with a baritone horn after the Air Force so I enrolled at Yakima Valley Community College to study agriculture. I was doing fine with that when the publisher of the Tri-City Herald called and asked if I’d consider working for him.

Now I write about buddies like Smitty, Charlie, Jim and numerous others who influenced my development.

At lunch on Labor Day, I learned that Jim has led a life a lot like mine. He’s done several things, including reporting for a paper back east.

Jim went way beyond me in education, earning a doctorate degree in human services. But he makes no big deal of it. He’s still just Jim Moody, average Joe with three grown children and five grandkids.

Jim continues to pursue music at the age of 69 and says: “Isn’t that crazy?”

I sure don’t think so. I’m often pursuing music in one way or another.

It was a three-hour lunch that filled my heart with joy. We re-lived the past and lived the present. The most important detail I learned was not that I was in Jim and Georgia’s wedding but that I was their best man. I had driven Jim from Tacoma to his wedding in Spokane.

What a nice way to remember the old times.