People filter through our lives from the day we’re born until the day we die. Influential people enter our lives and leave them, and we have no control over either of those times. What we do have control over is how we spend the time between those two events.
Make sure those people know how you truly feel about them, because you never know when you won’t be able to again.
I never in a million years thought I’d be writing this. Not now. Maybe not ever. I was waiting for my wife at the Kakar Dental Group orthodontist’s office when I got a message on Twitter. “Have you heard about Rod?” the person on the other end asked.
I responded back with three questions marks, then two minutes later with a, “No.” My mind went to a dark place for a split second — no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop this — before I went back to saner thoughts. Did Rod lose his job at the station? Were they canceling Go Twins Territory? Was he sick?
It was worse. So much worse than I could have imagined.
The gist of the next message that came five minutes later — each of which was more anguishing than the last — was that Rod had been found unresponsive in his hotel room. He was gone. The air rushed out of my lungs like fans used to be sucked out of the Metrodome.
I’ve experienced loss in my life, but I was young and not sure how to process it. I’ve also experienced gradual loss, like a sick loved one who never gets better. When you process grief over the span of a month, it’s just….different. When it all hits you like you’ve run into the outfield fence at Wrigley Field, well….that’s also different.
I managed to wobble into the office to meet my wife at the desk. I was white as a bedsheet and told her I needed to tell her some news that had taken my breath away. I assured her it wasn’t about our immediate family — she’s pregnant and I wanted to cushion the blow for her mental state — but that it was about Rod, and it wasn’t good.
The one thing people will tell you about Rod Simons was that his family was his everything. Lindsay Guentzel, a friend and former co-host on 96.3, said it very well in a private chat on Tuesday night. “Everyone knew Pam and Annie’s names,” Lindsay said of Rod’s wife and daughter. “That’s tells you what kind of guy he was.”
He was a doting father and a loving husband who didn’t go more than a few minutes without mentioning his family. He beamed when he played the bumper before segments on the radio that said: “You’re listening to Go Twins Territory……with my dad.”
But his love for his family wasn’t the only way he cared. “Tell Mandi I said hi, and I’ll see her at Target,” he quipped nearly every time we got off the air and I got ready to leave the station. Before I moved out of Plymouth, where Rod and his family still made their home, we’d frequently have unplanned meetings at Target on 494 and Rockford Road, with him usually waiting around a corner with his trademark mischievous smile. It was still our running joke.
So as I told my wife once she got out of the office, we both drank in the moment together. She was convinced it couldn’t be real. I knew it was real. Nobody would joke about this. This was too serious. In the blink of an eye, a person I never thought would be gone was just that.
Rod and I met in a UPS Store — adjacent to our Target, incidentally — about six or seven years ago. I stumbled over a word, joked about being a recent journalism graduate and we immediately bonded on that common ground. He had just finished his run as Sports Director at KSTP, but as has become abundantly clear in the time since his passing, he was always finding and molding young journalists into professionals.
From that day forward, Rod and I forged a tremendous bond that led me down a path to where I am today. Without Rod, I wouldn’t have gotten my first major-market radio experience. Without him I wouldn’t have any television experience, and who knows….maybe I wouldn’t have nearly as much experience working with the Twins.
I wasn’t alone. The outpouring of grief on Facebook provided at least a dozen stories of journalists young and, well, less young who Rod had shaped and formed over his 30-some years in the business. Rod had worked with some very big names, but if you had respect for the business, he had respect for you.
There were times I tested those boundaries, and he rightly gave he the (redacted) kicking I needed. I respect the heck out of him for that. He told me what I needed to hear and when I needed to hear it, but also sent me messages of encouragement when he thought I did a good job. In a lot of ways, he was the ultimate mentor in a field that is diminishing daily. I’ll never forget that.
I want to end by telling a story about Rod that really summed up who he was and how I’ll remember him.
I was sitting in Michael Steele’s office, sometime in 2014 I believe. Michael was the man in charge at what was then 96.3 KTWIN, and we were meeting to see if we could find a way for me to have an expanded role at the station. The conversation steered to Rod — he had a way of making that happen when he wasn’t in the building — and somehow we got on the subject of how he got the radio gig in the first place.
Michael grinned and told me he had a heck of a Rod story I needed to hear. So when the Pohlad Family decided to flip over B96 and make it the flagship for the Twins, Rod was doing his GameOn! show as part of the company (Rod Media). He was looking for additional work and was trying to find his way in the door.
Even as an established media professional with countless awards and accolades, there was no guarantee that Rod would be their guy. Rod had other plans. To get in the building, Rod ordered a half-dozen pizzas for the staff at the station. The delivery man showed up and was told no pizzas had been ordered. “They’re already paid for,” the delivery man said dutifully.
Since no one in the world is going to turn down free pizza, Steele grabbed them and took them in the back. When he opened the pizzas, he found resumes taped inside the boxes.
Rod’s dastardly plan worked. He was their guy.
It takes a certain bit of moxie and confidence to pull off that move — I tried it with golf balls and a certain sports editor at a well-known newspaper with, well, limited results — but that’s just who Rod was. He was supremely confident, supremely gifted and one hell of a guy.
I already miss him terribly.
Rod, I promise to keep your light shining and to keep my GameOn in your honor.
