Season 2, Episode 22: Kevin O’Connor
Two Floors Above Grief: Kevin O’Connor’s Story of Life, Loss, and Legacy
In this episode, host Jack Hubbard sits down with longtime friend and acclaimed author Kevin O’Connor to discuss his fascinating book, Two Floors Above Grief. Kevin shares personal stories about growing up in a funeral home, weaving together reflections on family, community, and life lessons learned in a unique setting.
Jack and Kevin dive into the book’s themes, explore the intersection of personal history and professional storytelling, and reminisce about shared experiences. Listeners will gain insights into the writing process, the importance of preserving family stories, and the unexpected wisdom that comes from living above a funeral home.
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Jack Hubbard: So, as I mentioned in the introduction.
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Jack Hubbard: I've known my guest today for 60 years
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Jack Hubbard: quick story about Kevin O'connor, and we're going to talk about his amazing book, 2 floors above grief today. I was at this funeral home and we were in high school. We're seniors in High School.
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Jack Hubbard: My dad had a Buick Electra 2, 25,
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Jack Hubbard: and we sat there probably 3Â h, 4Â h, just chatting away, and before you knew it the red light goes on and I burn out the alternator in the car. I don't know why the car didn't run out of gas, but but when Kevin and I get together this is this is what happens. We need hours, not minutes. Great to see you, Kevin.
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Kevin OConnor: Good to see you, too, Jack. That was quite a memory there of of the the driveway on Division Street at the funeral home. Yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: We have. We've had a lot of good times. Kevin was my roommate in college, and and for a while, and that's the reason I'm wearing his in his honor the Loyola Ramblers
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Jack Hubbard: sweatshirt because Kevin is a Loyola University grad, and we're going to talk today, since it's February and it's entrepreneur month. We're going to talk about entrepreneurs today, and I'm going to talk about this in 2 different ways, because Kevin was raised in an entrepreneurial family, and Kevin has become an entrepreneur at age 70. Ish
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Jack Hubbard: Kevin says I'm going to take all the stuff that I had from my family, and I'm going to write a book. And this is a thick book, because Kevin has a big family. And so we're gonna work. We're gonna talk about a lot of different kinds of things today. So let's let's start at on Division Street, and and you lived on the 3rd floor of the funeral home. Hence the title of the book.
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Jack Hubbard: Probably got hundreds, thousands of experiences of living there. Talk about a few of them. Fun challenging, sad. Whatever.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, boy, that's that's leaving a
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Kevin OConnor: double door wide open. There, Jack. I guess like
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Kevin OConnor: I mean in general, I never knew any different. I mean they my parents. When I was born in 1950, they brought me home to that
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Kevin OConnor: that bedroom which I had for the next 22 years
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Kevin OConnor: until I finally, you know, got out of college and left home for sure. So
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Kevin OConnor: but yeah, I guess a lot of the experiences having to do just with making that
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Kevin OConnor: funeral business. That was just part of my life.
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Kevin OConnor: You know, similar to how you know some of our classmates. We. I know we have one classmate that lived above or live below her father's pediatrician office. So it mean the idea that that or another East Side friend who who lived upstairs from his dad's printing printing business. So the idea that a lot of our parents and still today.
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Kevin OConnor: parents have their businesses within our homes. And actually, in this day and age, we're coming back to that a little bit with families working right out of the home. So I'm digressing a little bit to your question. With some of the experiences I had. Well, I think in terms, our one experience.
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Kevin OConnor: a general experience I had is. Our life was pretty regular, I mean it wasn't. It was a great family life.
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Kevin OConnor: and but it was. We had this unusual twist where we shared an apartment. We shared apartments with my aunt and uncle and their 3 daughters, and, as you know, from being there, those it wasn't apartments with separate doors. You had to. I had to walk through the second floor apartment to get to my 3rd floor apartment.
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Kevin OConnor: And that 3rd floor. I guess another unusual experience that probably isn't shared by a lot of people. Is that that 3rd floor used to be a ballroom.
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Kevin OConnor: It was a ballroom in the original house
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Kevin OConnor: and the bedroom, that when my parents moved there in 1939, 40, and took this ballroom and made it into an apartment.
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Kevin OConnor: the the place they put our bedroom had a stage in it, because that was where the entertainers used to perform when this was a ballroom. So my bed up until I was about 8 years old, was next to the stage.
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Kevin OConnor: and so my my 2 brothers and I shared this room with the stage in it, which, for from a practicality point of view, my parents used under the stage for storage.
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Kevin OConnor: But then, later, as we got older and bigger and had more bigger beds and bigger desk, and they had to get so they got rid of the stage. So but I still think it's that affinity for me of being sleeping next to a stage for the 1st 8, 9 years of my life that I'm pretty comfortable on a stage and pretty comfortable. So that that's 1 little interesting story about living in the funeral home. I think the other thing that just in terms of blending family life with business life.
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Kevin OConnor: what I learned from my dad and my uncle and their wives, my mom, my aunt, was this the whole aspect of service and service to family service to community and had that model to me for every day and just
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Kevin OConnor: sometimes, and the family had to make sacrifices sometimes, because the business would
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Kevin OConnor: come in, business would come in, or there'd be a a call would come on the phone in the midst of a family dinner, and Dad would get up and go, and he would do whatever he needed to do to to help that family so. But
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Kevin OConnor: I guess I as I look back retrospectively, I I don't. I didn't then, and don't now ever really view it as God. Doesn't he gonna spend any time with us?
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Kevin OConnor: I viewed it more as seeing him in action and being with him, and and seeing what he did for other people, I think, provided some lessons for me, and I think it's really part of what led me into education, too, because it's a very similar field.
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Kevin OConnor: So those are just a couple nuggets of we, and we'll probably get into more. But just a couple of nuggets of living in that house. I did find out just this week that
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Kevin OConnor: That's 1 of only 3 houses in Elgin, built in that era that had a ballroom incorporated into the design. When I, when I experienced driving around Elgin and see similar houses and other towns, whether it's Aurora or Joliet, or other town, Oak Park. Those towns that are were built up similar to Elgin
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Kevin OConnor: and see other Victorian houses. I just. I always thought all the Victorian houses had a ballroom. But in some of the research that other people have done lately, they realize that there's only only 3 structures in Elgin that actually had a ballroom on the 3rd floor.
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Kevin OConnor: So that was a that was, it's fun to learn things about that, even now that I'm 75 years away from my birth and my arrival at that that house so.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, but and you mentioned your brother. So Barrett
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Jack Hubbard: O'connor became chairman of a bank here.
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Jack Hubbard: And Carry
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Jack Hubbard: was is is an amazing contractor and an art true artist when it comes to contracting. He and his partner, Steve Vincent.
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Jack Hubbard: virtually remodeled every single room in our previous house, and Steve has built our house
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Jack Hubbard: that we've just moved into. So I'm curious you wanted education, carried construction and bear it into banking. Why, none of you. Why did none of you go into the funeral business? Why didn't you follow in your dad's footsteps?
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Kevin OConnor: Well, I can speak for myself, I probably, and I'll speak for myself, and that all for 3 of us. But I know one of the things that
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Kevin OConnor: and I think I even mentioned in the book one of the things that
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Kevin OConnor: going back to the story I told him on my dad about just having to get up from a dinner table or saying, Hey, I can't make it to your play, or I can't make it to the game, or or whatever you're doing, I've I've gotta go here.
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Kevin OConnor: And this the the idea that he, he.
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Kevin OConnor: he lived at the mercy of the telephone in those days because he had to wait for his next call, and I think, growing up the other.
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Kevin OConnor: What I saw was here.
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Kevin OConnor: You sort very tied down. I think I think you're probably tied down to any business you immerse yourself in. But this seemed to me, from an observer point of view
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Kevin OConnor: that I didn't want to have be that tied down.
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Kevin OConnor: And Dad would remark that to me, and sometimes that he felt really tied down.
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Kevin OConnor: the other thing is, and neither my uncle or my dad.
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Kevin OConnor: I talk about this in the book a little bit, too.
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Kevin OConnor: They never
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Kevin OConnor: They never pressured us. They always wanted us to explore. They wanted us to have our own lives. My uncle had 3 daughters who were of a generation born in the thirties that by the time they came of age in the fifties
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Kevin OConnor: nothing was even you. Don't. You never heard of a woman in the in funeral business at that time. Now it's very prevalent.
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Kevin OConnor: but for them it was. They took a path of college marriage. Children when I was came. When I came of age, 1015 years later.
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Kevin OConnor: it was, Dad said, just what do you want to do? I want to go to college. What do you want to study? I think I'll study political science and education. Okay. And he did the same thing with my brothers and Uncle Lawrence, and they never pressured us.
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Kevin OConnor: I I never, even
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Kevin OConnor: if I ever thought about doing it, was so far in the back of my mind that it never really surfaced.
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Kevin OConnor: But I knew all along, just from their encouragement, and how they operated, and the success of the business, that that was certainly something I could do.
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Kevin OConnor: But I got so involved in what I was doing, and interested in what I was doing. I just pursued that, and
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Kevin OConnor: he gave it every blessing. He never! And I think there might have been a little touch of dad that said
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Kevin OConnor: He didn't want me to be tied down the same way he was. And then the way he interpreted. The funeral industry at the time was that you're a servant. You're a servant doing a service. So in in that regard you you have to be ready at any time. 24, 7, and living in that kind of environment, I think, is part of what deterred me from choosing a career that I had a little more freedom of time thing. So that's that's that's how I made my choice.
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Kevin OConnor: and basically that. And this knowing that my parents encouraged me and didn't discourage me from anything I wanted to pursue.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: yeah, one of the things that Carrie and I talk about every once in a while, when I see him is, if it's my understanding. You'll amplify this, but it's my understanding that all the funeral homes in Elgin took turns being on call.
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Jack Hubbard: And back in the day, back in the fifties. Sixties
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Jack Hubbard: it the hearses from the funeral homes were actually ambulances, because.
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Kevin OConnor: It could be. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. We had 2. We had. We had an ambulance and of hers, but some of them they they hit, they play duplicate roles. Yeah, you're, right yeah,
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Jack Hubbard: And so you you could be called at any time 2 30 in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning, and and I'm sure sometimes your dad said, Hey, Kevin? I may need a little help here and so that's always a challenge. So your book, 2 floors above grief
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Jack Hubbard: is top 10 in 3 categories on Amazon kindle. It's unlimited. It's very understandable. It's a phenomenal book I want to dive into it. But I'm curious. You waited until you were in your seventies to write this book or late sixties, you started. I'm curious. What was what was your inspiration? Why did you finally decide to sit down and say, I'm going to write a book.
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Kevin OConnor: Question, yeah, because the stories that are in the book
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Kevin OConnor: are stories that have been there since the time I was born, you know, so I mean and evolved over the years of me growing up and getting older.
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Kevin OConnor: What prevented me from doing it was just thinking,
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Kevin OConnor: I got into my education career
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Kevin OConnor: and having kids and getting involved, and and
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Kevin OConnor: time became a time thing for me.
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Kevin OConnor: It was always a desire. I always wanted to write a book. I always wanted to do something, and I did a lot of writing in my profession, and of course I wrote a dissertation, too, which takes a little bit, but I always thought I wanted to do something that
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Kevin OConnor: I wanted to get published.
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Kevin OConnor: I really didn't know what it was going to be or anything like that. And I remember walking along a beach
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Kevin OConnor: in South Carolina with some friends in 1993, and they said, What do you wanna do with the next
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Kevin OConnor: 2030 years as I'm going to write a book? What are you going to write about? I don't know. And so then what happened after I retired from in 2020, when I retired from education.
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Kevin OConnor: I had time then, and I also had a collection of
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Kevin OConnor: family letters that had been diverted to me over the years, letters that I'd either saved, or letters that people had saved in their shoeboxes and gave them to me. And
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Kevin OConnor: and I decided to sort through these letters. And and it was mostly written by people in my family. So then, that's when I thought, Okay, this is where this this is where the book can come from. This is what I can write about. This is using these letters as a template or a format to put the actual
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Kevin OConnor: words, the people who wrote them to explain their character. So that became part of the inspiration, and saying, after I organized all these letters in the notebooks, I thought, now, what am I going to do with these things? Oh, I want to write a book. And so then it was just the idea of
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Kevin OConnor: learning, even though I'd written a lot in my profession. And but writing a memoir is real, different, or a book of nonfiction is different. So that's when I got with people that would help me. And and a place called Nonfiction Book School, which is a great program online
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Kevin OConnor: and just helped. That helped me develop a discipline and a schedule and a stick-to-itiveness. And the whole idea of, you know, building on what we learned in high school and college. And you make an outline. You get your ideas. You make an outline. All those skills we learned as kids, you know, came back to me at age 70, to say, Oh.
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Kevin OConnor: I know how to do this. I've done this before, so that that's what made me wait so long, and and probably I just was so immersed in
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Kevin OConnor: being a dad and being, you know, and doing, being a dad and being a principal of a school and a teacher, and being involved in the communities that I there just wasn't a
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Kevin OConnor: for me. I didn't have the time to to discipline myself to to do a steady writing job. And
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Kevin OConnor: for me, that's what it takes. I you I just can't do it in little segments. I gotta sit down and do it. So that's why I waited.
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Kevin OConnor: That's why we did.
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Jack Hubbard: And it's interesting. Back. When we were in high school and college, they didn't have post-it notes and post it notes
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Jack Hubbard: all over the place. How long did it take you to to get it from
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Jack Hubbard: in your mind to paper, to the book.
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Kevin OConnor: Okay? Well, I had the idea. So it wasn't. So when I started this nonfiction book school
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Kevin OConnor: and in 2021, yeah, 2020.
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Kevin OConnor: Everything I know about you. But everything in my mind. 2020 covid. Everything is pre covid post covid. So 2021
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Kevin OConnor: is. When I decided that I was gonna pursue this and found this woman Stacy Ennis
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Kevin OConnor: and her program. And so they coached me right through. So you asked, how long did it take? So once her class was like 8 consecutive weeks, and then she coached us through steps. And you, if you did the steps as you went along. One of those was just putting all your ideas on post-it notes.
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Kevin OConnor: and so I post. I went through packets and packets of post-it notes, and but her technique, then, is then you regroup those post-it notes, and I've read of other people that do this with index cards, and you, you do this until you. So you see something
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Kevin OConnor: taken shape. I think it's
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Kevin OConnor: I think it's sort of like an artist on an easel or a canvas. You just you put some paint, some place and then you start. I think I'll move this over here. And so the time it took so that was starting in May 21,
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Kevin OConnor: and then, just through Stacey and her team's work, not knowing to put myself on a schedule of working 4 or 5Â HA day, and just closing the door.
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Kevin OConnor: allowing myself few to no distractions. And just by that time I had an outline, and I just work from the outline, and what I learned was, I don't edit as I write I just write and get the words on the paper.
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Kevin OConnor: So that was what I was doing through spring summer of 21
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Kevin OConnor: by October of 20, late end of the year of October 21. I had it in a good enough state that I could find an editor, so I think the beginning of 2022.
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Kevin OConnor: He, Patrick Price, he edited it, and then I went to this group called my word publishing who I still work with, and they they take you through the Self Publishing Process. And so by November of 2022 is when the book was published. So you look at May 21 to November 22,
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Kevin OConnor: about 18 months of of time, and I don't know if that's typical. I mean, I know people that are a lot more disciplined, a lot more serious than me that do this.
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Kevin OConnor: They just write, write, write, write. I I don't do that. But for that particular for this particular book. That's that's how that's how how long it took me to get it from.
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Jack Hubbard: So it.
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Kevin OConnor: Writing.
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Jack Hubbard: And you know it. It's not an easy book to write, because your family is huge.
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Jack Hubbard: cousins and sisters and brothers, and not sisters, but brothers everywhere. So the other thing I really like about the book is. So here's your mom and Dad's wedding day picture from.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah, yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: Lot of lot of really neat really neat photos.
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Jack Hubbard: Talk about one of the things now that you've become known as is a grief navigator. I'm curious about
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Jack Hubbard: grief, and how your perspective
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Jack Hubbard: has been influenced by living in a funeral home and seeing all the grief that you that you did see.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah,
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Kevin OConnor: and I guess as a kid as a teen. And I I see grief because I'd see people crying all right.
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Kevin OConnor: See people sad, or I see people going through the formality of going through a funeral
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Kevin OConnor: and experiencing that, or being a pallbearer thing. Other things I did to help in the funeral home to see it.
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Kevin OConnor: Part of that is, I learned at a early age, though I think that
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Kevin OConnor: grief is part of life. And I think, as I read more about grief, and there's so many resources now on grief, things that were not available when we were kids, our our parents were experiencing it in in their days.
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Kevin OConnor: I mean, the grief was sort of brushed under the rug, I think, and and
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Kevin OConnor: and just you have the funeral, you go home. You go go to work the next day, and that's it, you know. But there's so many layers of mental health and things that go with grief.
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Kevin OConnor: That so I think living in that environment
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Kevin OConnor: helped me in some ways.
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Kevin OConnor: to see. Grief is just a part of life, and that I like the adage that one of the adages is out. There is, you know, grief is just. Really some people say grief is love in disguise or grief is really love, or you wouldn't have grief unless you had love.
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Kevin OConnor: I didn't see that so much as I observed other families. But certainly, as I've experienced my own grief with losses of family members and friends. And
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Kevin OConnor: it's that's what it represents. As I read other people's testimonies on social media about
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Kevin OConnor: having a hard time getting through it, and and certainly I know that.
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Kevin OConnor: But I know I've come out the other end. I I guess the people that
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Kevin OConnor: the ones that are most close to me that have died. My mom did, for example, or some of my cousins, people that lived in the house on Division Street that were my family closest family.
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Kevin OConnor: We experience the grief, and then we have the joy. And I I think. One thing that I learned
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Kevin OConnor: to growing up was, you have to.
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Kevin OConnor: There is a lighter side to grief.
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Kevin OConnor: and it's not always there. It doesn't always happen right away.
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Kevin OConnor: For some people it doesn't happen at all.
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Kevin OConnor: and I guess that's I'm rambling here. But I think the other thing about grief is, it's so individual
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Kevin OConnor: there is. There's like, there's a lot of books, a lot of podcasts, a lot of tapes out there about grief. But everything it comes down to is, everybody has their own approach. Everybody has their own
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Kevin OConnor: way to handle it, and it's very individual. So the grief navigator, what I've gotten to be doing now on on. Mostly it's a social media based on Instagram and and Facebook, sometimes on Linkedin is
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Kevin OConnor: a place I consider myself like a warehouse of with a warehouse that's growing of information, and
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Kevin OConnor: I just keep acquainting myself with all the other resources that are out there.
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Kevin OConnor: about grief and the books and the the authorities, the the people that have made a name for themselves. And as I I want to share that with other people, because, maybe, as they're experiencing their grief.
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Kevin OConnor: that source will be of solace or help to them when they're ready to open up that book or open up that podcast or go to that presentation. So the grief navigator, I view, is somebody myself navigating
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Kevin OConnor: the resources that are there for other people to to use. And so that's that's how I see myself as the grief navigator. So.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I I don't know that you
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Jack Hubbard: you'll often hear people talk about when someone has
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Jack Hubbard: terminal cancer. And you know they want they're gonna die. And and they want closure. I don't know that you ever get closure. I think just life takes over and you have to. You have to move on, and I think it's the same with, you know. Dogs.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh!
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Jack Hubbard: They're dog lovers, and we've lost dogs, and and it's very, very hard. But you you have to move on, and and I don't know what you're finding, Kevin. But a lot of people just can't. And and that's that's probably when they really need some professional help.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, there's plenty of professional help out there, both online and and personal. And I think it just depends on person.
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Kevin OConnor: It's perspective. I think even now.
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Kevin OConnor: sometimes. When a thought comes into me from a a relative that's past.
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Kevin OConnor: I'll I'll just say, Hey, they're just coming in to say, Hi, you know, they're just they're just yeah. I could be sad that I'm thinking about them, but they're just letting me know they're there, and whether whoever in there, that's that's my
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Kevin OConnor: spiritual sense. I guess that's how I handle that part. But you know. But grief comes up in so many other places. It's not just the passing of a friend or a loved one. It's it's
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Kevin OConnor: There's a tinge. I've had tinges of grief when I've moved out of a house. I've lived in a long time. There's grief when a friendship ends, or it doesn't pan out or changes as I grow older I see how friendships change
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Kevin OConnor: the geographically or this, whatever. I think about work groups I've been, and how close we were when we worked together. But as soon as we shortly after we left the work environment, those friendships
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Kevin OConnor: don't transfer into the outside the work environment.
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Kevin OConnor: You know I I'm I've experienced estrangement and still do, and that
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Kevin OConnor: for me. That's been the toughest grief, because they're when there is a death
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Kevin OConnor: there is, there is something that ends when it's an estrangement, whether it's a with a friendship, or a child or a parent, that other individual is alive.
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Kevin OConnor: And so when I get those I call them tinges, or peaks, or incidences of grief. I deal with that in a different way than I would with somebody that's passed on. So yeah, like you said earlier. Grief is just a part. I don't want to minimize it. Grief I don't like the word. Just grief is a part of life, you know this. That's what it is, and and we just have to, and I find the best way to handle it is to
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Kevin OConnor: whether you talk or read or communicate, but you can't keep the grief inside. That's just going to eat you up. Just eat you up, and I think that's true. That's what I discover in most of the things I'm reading and learning about from other people. You have to have an outlet. You have to figure out a way what to do with it.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I I was thinking as I was getting ready for this. I remember in high school
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Jack Hubbard: where if someone died without anybody.
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Jack Hubbard: we would get called out of school, and we would be pallbearers.
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Jack Hubbard: We would go to the cemetery, and I think paid us 25 bucks or something.
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Kevin OConnor: Want this but 5, I think.
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Jack Hubbard: And so well, I got 25, because I
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Jack Hubbard: always had to carry the heavy
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Jack Hubbard: so. But you know, the sad thing about that is that there was nobody there to grieve. And we're in high school. We don't. We're not. Gonna we don't know the person, and we're immature. And we're getting our 5 bucks and getting out of class. Somebody died. And and you know, when you reflect back on that along.
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Jack Hubbard: you know. Gosh, it's been 60 years, you know it's sad that there was nobody there to grieve as part of the family. I think that you it's when you grieve, I think, grieving together sometimes is better than grieving.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, yeah. And I think
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Kevin OConnor: I learned a lot from those experiences just to to help. Yeah, like you said. And you had a you had a family and people, and but to to show up at a funeral and know that
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Kevin OConnor: we were the only ones there, and Dad engineered it in such a way to put us there. So this person did have people with him or her to exit life. I just I just downloaded. I haven't read it yet. There was a feature on the today show recently
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Kevin OConnor: about a high school
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Kevin OConnor: that has a club. I got to learn more about it, but as I read the headline, I want to be able to to share this with people on my newsletter and things, too, that this this group of high school kids is, they go to the funerals and under the funeral directors in this town. Go to this group of kids from the high school and say, will you be the pallbearers, and and they share their experiences? I'm anxious to read more about that. So and to know that
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Kevin OConnor: you know, 40 50 years ago.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah, Dad had a germ of that idea by getting us kids, kids, teenagers to help out. And now they've got another other groups of people that are doing this, and see the value both from the teenagers point of view, but also from the deceased point of view. So.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you know, one of the things that that's really cool about this book. And the reason I wanted to have Kevin on in the 1st session in February around entrepreneurs is that his dad and his uncle Lawrence were true entrepreneurs. They started this, I think Uncle Lawrence
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Jack Hubbard: got your dad coming over from Indiana in the thirties, and so, but a lot of funeral homes now Kevin, are going the way of banks where they're merging, and they're.
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Kevin OConnor: I mean that.
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Jack Hubbard: You mentioned this, this community funeral home talk about the the importance of community-based small business funeral homes in terms of the the communities that they serve, and why that's so important.
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Kevin OConnor: Well, I mean, and based on my own experiences in our town where we grew up, Elgin, each one of those funeral homes was individually owned, and we had anywhere from 5 to 6 funeral homes, operating at the same time in Elgin, and then other funeral homes in the towns that are surrounded us.
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Kevin OConnor: So each one of those homes was family owned, and
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Kevin OConnor: a place for people to come. But
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Kevin OConnor: I think the idea of
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Kevin OConnor: before funeral homes got corporate, and a lot of them are. Now. That was the essence of the funeral home business. The whole idea of the funeral home was based on the funerals used to be in families, homes.
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Kevin OConnor: and so the undertaker, the funeral director, whatever they were, the mortician, whatever they were going by in those days at the turn in the early 19 hundreds, 18 hundreds was they would take care of the preparation, but they would have that service in the family home.
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Kevin OConnor: But then the thinking in the 1919 tens, 19 twenties.
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Kevin OConnor: the feeling became, I'm not sure I want my house to have this kind of memory in it of having to bury my father in this house, and then having to go on with my life in this house. So that's part of where the idea of a funeral home became a place for the family to gather in a more of a neutral location, so that when they went back to the family home. They didn't have that memory of the actual funeral.
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Kevin OConnor: So that's where the that whole idea came from. But I think that idea that the role of the funeral director and the undertaker becomes very community oriented. So
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Kevin OConnor: when I think of my Uncle Lawrence's stories, when he 1st moved to Elgin from Hammond, Indiana, to start this funeral home in 1930. He moved to Elgin, a town he didn't know a thing about.
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Kevin OConnor: What's he do. 1st he joins a church, he joins a club, he joins, you know the things you do as bankers, too. You get out in the community. You can't.
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Kevin OConnor: You can't stay in a bank or a funeral home, or in my case, when I became a principal. You can't stay in those offices and expect people just to come to you. You have to go to. You have to go to the people.
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Kevin OConnor: And so that's in that sense of being an entrepreneur. And what my uncle did as a late 20 something in a brand new town.
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Kevin OConnor: He just put his boots to the ground and started
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Kevin OConnor: putting his hands in his face out there and introducing people. I'm the new. I'm the new funeral director in town.
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Kevin OConnor: and
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Kevin OConnor: Not the easiest business to probably get started.
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Kevin OConnor: But he
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Kevin OConnor: He knew his.
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Kevin OConnor: The reason he got interested in coming to Elgin from Hammond. He always wanted to have his own funeral home, but he heard through whatever grapevines existed in the late 19 twenties.
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Kevin OConnor: He heard of an opportunity in the town of Elgin, Illinois, to come, because the person who had professed themselves to be. The Catholic undertaker had died and his business shutter closed, so that provided an opportunity for Uncle Lawrence to come to town and see that as an opportunity.
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Kevin OConnor: So his 1st and being of Catholic faith himself at the time, he joined the parishes and got involved, and got into all those committees and all the things you do not with this, and I never observed this from him or my dad. It's never sometimes undertakers get the
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Kevin OConnor: the reputation of Digger. You know, Digger, they're out for your business. They're just they're coming after you because they know you're going to die sometime. But I but it's very subtle. It's you just you work. And in the idea, with the idea that someday somebody might need my services.
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Kevin OConnor: I can't guarantee they'll choose me, but I want to be there and be in the community. So you do that. I guess I'm looking at you, the banker, you know very similar. I mean you, you and the things when I read about and listen to your interviews
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Kevin OConnor: from current bankers. It's the same thing. You're always it's intentional.
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Kevin OConnor: but it's very community oriented and service oriented and I'm here for you. I guess that's another way to say it. I'm here for you.
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Kevin OConnor: and let then you let the client or the customer make their decision. So.
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Jack Hubbard: I've always been curious. because O'connor funeral home branded itself
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Jack Hubbard: and and had had a great tagline. It's better to know us and not need us than to need us and not know us.
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Kevin OConnor: I'm who.
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Jack Hubbard: It's been curious who came up with that.
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Jack Hubbard: It's very. It's brilliant.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah, that's a
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Kevin OConnor: that that answer went to went with both of my dad and Michael to their graves, I think
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Kevin OConnor: And I asked them about. I remember having conversations, and I don't know if they ever came up, and I googled that term.
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Kevin OConnor: and I found it attached to a funeral home someplace in the country, maybe with a slight variation, or I found it attached to another type of business.
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Kevin OConnor: But
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Kevin OConnor: I I my, the romantic side of me pictures my dad sitting laboriously at a desk, moving words around until it comes up.
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Kevin OConnor: He probably saw it someplace and and made it, you know varied it a little bit but it stuck. It was like you that you saw it was every prevalent in our town, on every church calendar there was, or or any kind of publicity that was there, and I think I even worked it into a skid or 2 at Saint Ed's when we were doing stuff, but but
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Kevin OConnor: it. And and even now, when I read it, I think, Okay, there's there's a little deeper meaning in this, you know, and but I think it's what it says is, it's true
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Kevin OConnor: for any profession. It's true, for any vocation. It's true.
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Kevin OConnor: I mean, I'm I'm thinking about being a dad. I could apply it to fatherhood, too. I mean the same kind of thing. Yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah.
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Kevin OConnor: So I I don't know where they came up with it, but it it is. It has become a little bit of that O'connor legacy a little bit, and that's
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Kevin OConnor: I'm happy for that.
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Jack Hubbard: You you talked about. You didn't say it this way, but it's living grief.
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Jack Hubbard: And and I'm curious about how your experience in advocating for the Lgbtq community, especially youth.
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Kevin OConnor: Shaped your thought process around supporting people that are going through.
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Jack Hubbard: Living grief and just life challenges in general.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah. Well, when you speak about that, and you know I also got involved in that later in life, when I
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Kevin OConnor: when I came out myself and and came to that realization, and then thought, Well, now that I've come to this realization, how can I help others since that's how I got involved in the school side of that.
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Kevin OConnor: and certainly there's a tie into grief there, because so many
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Kevin OConnor: so many people who who have that that situation in life there's a lot of grief involved most.
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Kevin OConnor: Sometimes the the person, whether it be an adult
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Kevin OConnor: coming out later in life or a child trying to decide what to do, make that decision. Their their family abandons them.
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Kevin OConnor: so they lose their family. There's a term in the LGBT. Community called Chosen family.
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Kevin OConnor: because when people lose the loses support, lose
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Kevin OConnor: I don't know if they ever lose, I guess in some people, for some it is losing the love, but they lose. They lose that family influence, that family connection when they decide to come out. There's certainly a grief there, and and some of the adults I worked with. And then I when I worked with high school kids and college kids on this, it was just
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Kevin OConnor: they were sad. And if the and the idea with the mental health aspects of grief.
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Kevin OConnor: The suicide rates among
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Kevin OConnor: Lgbtq youth are very are higher than the than the non LGBT, and part of that is that a whole element of rejection? And what you go through? That's a loss. I mean, we look at the word grief with loss. So that's a whole other kind of loss.
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Kevin OConnor: It's it's when a person comes out it's your
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Kevin OConnor: I always I I reframe it sometimes, instead of saying coming out, I say, going to. And so
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Kevin OConnor: part of it. Because you're going to something else
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Kevin OConnor: when you come out. I'm speaking personally when you're coming out. You don't really know what you're going to, but you know you got to get out of the situation. You're in and come to grips with a personal identity.
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Kevin OConnor: But there's a there's a you give up something, and then you get something, and that's all part of a process. And I think it's very similar to the grief process
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Kevin OConnor: that that aspect of loss, finding something else, trying to find some reconciliation.
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Kevin OConnor: and again with any kind of grief. Every situation is is separate.
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Kevin OConnor: and the more and the more people I worked with with LGBT issues.
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Kevin OConnor: every situation is different. There's very, very little that's delineated or prescriptive prescriptive. You have to just work through it through talk, through conversation, through relationships, and get through it that way. So what I learned about grief in the funeral home and being a kid. And you know I was able to apply to this aspect of my career, too.
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Kevin OConnor: and and how the coming out process, or the going to process certainly has elements to grief involved as well.
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Jack Hubbard: Hmm.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah, yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: Ever since I've known you.
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Jack Hubbard: and and you know we we did a lot of this together we were. We were on stage. We do plays in high school and things like that. You've taken it to the next level. I'm curious about how
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Jack Hubbard: plays and how you're being on stage in community theater.
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Jack Hubbard: How that's influenced your storytelling on podcasts. And when you do speeches and just life and loss in general.
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Kevin OConnor: Okay, good one. The
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Kevin OConnor: I guess. I think that goes back to the beginning of our conversation, you know, sleeping next to a stage. There's something that probably gets into me a little better, and having the opportunity as a kid to jump up on stage anytime anytime I wanted
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Kevin OConnor: so when I and high school being in a grounding area for that, of course, and we had good people to to coach us and stuff in their high school and then taking it upon myself in the seventies to get more involved in community theater up in Woodstock.
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Kevin OConnor: And each time I did something. I just got a little more sure of myself and a little bit more and there's such a wonderful
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Kevin OConnor: camaraderie in theater, I mean, I felt it in high school. I felt it with the production. I just we just finished in August. There's just
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Kevin OConnor: people come to those theater performance experiences for different reasons. They all have their own reasons. But when you put and I, it's not unlike the book you start with, just a morsel of something in a play. You've got this play that's already written.
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Kevin OConnor: this music that's already written. But you start with this, and then the interpretation comes, and the fun and the camarader. Let's try this and let's do that. And then eventually it develops into a production that because of the way the calendar is set up. You've got to go on stage, no matter no matter what you put that date on the calendar. And so, whatever whatever there, by the time the audience starts to come. That's what you gotta go with. So sometimes that works out. Sometimes it doesn't, but that
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Kevin OConnor: But I think
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Kevin OConnor: and answer your question. I think this having those experiences is are very enriching for me. And it it's really helps to dissipate a fear
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Kevin OConnor: I don't.
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Kevin OConnor: I have. I'll connect something to you. I am. I have more fear about getting up to the 1st T on a golf course than I do about breaking into a dance routine in a musical in front of, you know, hundreds of people. You know. Golf was never my strength. I gave it all I had, but I used to get so nervous that I admire you guys that can do this without any kind of thinking.
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Kevin OConnor: But I I used to get so nervous about getting up there to take that 1st swing and
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Kevin OConnor: That's where I would get butterflies. That's where I would get.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, I wish this was over, and
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Kevin OConnor: but I don't have that on stage
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Kevin OConnor: nothing to that degree. I just know there's a whole group of people around me, and I know, and I. And I know that, hey, whatever happens, happens. And
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Kevin OConnor: looking back, if I could have employed some of that same thing to my golf swing, I'd probably be playing more golf with you. But the
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Kevin OConnor: That's that's I. Just. The theater has been just a really good outlet for me, and
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Kevin OConnor: it's helped me to
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Kevin OConnor: be reminded of what it's it's to take something from the beginning and to come out with a finished product. And it's very, very satisfying, very satisfying.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: So you you write your 1st book, which is phenomenal, and I gotta tell you it's it's 1 of those that you read, and it. It isn't a novel, but it can read like a novel.
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Jack Hubbard: What's next? Kevin? What are you working on.
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Kevin OConnor: Well, what's next? Is
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Kevin OConnor: one of the. As I got more and more into the self publishing world, and I think this is true of even traditional published people, too.
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Kevin OConnor: the. In order to market one book, you gotta write another one. The more you have out there the better off. You're gonna be. So I
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Kevin OConnor: yeah, I'm working on the
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Kevin OConnor: A. How to book right now. That's what I'm working on the part of that. The book you've got in your hand. There is based on those family letters I was telling you about, but I had to develop a system
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Kevin OConnor: to organize those things, and
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Kevin OConnor: What I want! The next books is going to talk about my experiences and organizing what I did and how I did. It doesn't mean everybody will organize their stuff in the same way. But yeah, the mission is, I hate to see. And actually, I just ran into somebody yesterday at a at a book event.
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Kevin OConnor: who came up to the table and said they just
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Kevin OConnor: somebody in their family had passed, and there was hundreds of letters, and I said, what are you doing with those?
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Kevin OConnor: Well, we're not throwing them away, I said. Don't throw them away, and said, I can. I can help you get them organized.
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Kevin OConnor: And I think so much of
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Kevin OConnor: so many times. The tendency when people do discover those things.
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Kevin OConnor: whether it's letters or other types of artifacts, is to say,
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Kevin OConnor: I got to get rid of it. Just throw it away. But years! There's a richness of history and genealogy and things there. So the next book is just going to be able to point that out. And I'm just going to focus on letters. I'm not going to focus on
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Kevin OConnor: artifacts. That's my plan right now. Just in this, I in this idea stage for the book just to talk about and focus it just on letters.
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Kevin OConnor: And I think it's pretty vital that
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Kevin OConnor: The older we get, the less
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Kevin OConnor: the less opportunity there are for to find letters like this
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Kevin OConnor: for the last 30 years, I guess people have been emailing.
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Kevin OConnor: And so the idea of handwriting a letter is foreign to, you know, most kids.
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Kevin OConnor: you know, even to thinking about the thank you. Notes. I'm waiting for for weddings I've been to. I don't know if kids do that anymore. Right? Thank you. Notes.
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Kevin OConnor: So the idea that letter writing is is a is a treasure from the past.
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Kevin OConnor: and when we do come across these things, whether we're in a in a States or people have them
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Kevin OConnor: stored in their houses because they don't know what else to do with them. They just keep moving them from box to box. The idea of the books. Let's make sense of these. Let's tie it together and take it beyond whatever kind of research you're doing with genealogy
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Kevin OConnor: to talk about. When when you see the actual words that people wrote, and whether they typed them, or
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Kevin OConnor: or even to look at the handwriting of people is just amazing to me. So that's what the next is. Just that whole richness of of letters, whether it be from family or business, letters or things things like that, whatever it is that people have in a business or a personal world. What do you? What do you? What do you do with that? Those letters that were written and typed. And
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Kevin OConnor: well, I'm thinking, off the top of my head, I'm thinking of shorthand, you know, is to get in the head of a shorthand person who's doesn't even exist anymore. Probably. Yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, you. So you you've had a chance over the last few minutes to experience Kevin O'connor. But, you need to see him live Kevin does, you know some speaking, and for groups and associations. If people wanted to reach out to you and say, Hey, Kevin, I'd like you to come and present to my small business group, or my mortuary group, or whatever it is. What kind of presentations do you do? What do you? What do you talk about when you get on stage.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, thanks for asking. Yeah. So part of what I I gave
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Kevin OConnor: Part of what I talk about is how what my dad and uncle did in the 19 thirties in this particular business funeral home business. What did they do as entrepreneurs? What did they do? As people in a brand new town starting off a new business because they had this dream.
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Kevin OConnor: How they create it into something that's lasted
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Kevin OConnor: 2 different, you know. Now it's that
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Kevin OConnor: name is almost a hundred years old. Now.
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Kevin OConnor: what did they do in 1930 to do that? And what can people nowadays employ
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Kevin OConnor: about? What can they? What can we learn from their resourcefulness, their tenacity, their knowing who their market is? And so that'd be one thing that would apply to any business, whether it be? I've given that to funeral directors, schools, and things, but what any business could do, or any kid. Everybody's a kid to me now, and what any kid in their twenties or thirties could do and use what they learned in the past.
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Kevin OConnor: So the other thing I having spent 50 years in education.
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Kevin OConnor: There's just a lot of things. I've been able to be had some time to talk to conferences about.
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Kevin OConnor: one of the things I'm working on is my concepts is like oatmeal on a wall. And what sticks. So what I'm working on is to help current educators.
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Kevin OConnor: I'm doing some research with my former students, whether they're in my classroom or whether they were in my
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Kevin OConnor: school as a friend center.
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Kevin OConnor: What do they remember these? Some of these kids, my former students are in their fifties. Now.
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Kevin OConnor: what are what's what do they remember?
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Kevin OConnor: What is it that they take away from that classroom teacher, that classroom culture, that school culture. What is it that sticks with them? So I'm just getting some of that data. And I've done little mini presentations. But I see where that could really be helpful for educational conferences.
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Kevin OConnor: The other thing I'm learning about is this, the whole idea of of self publishing and mark and book marketing. And
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Kevin OConnor: over, I think it's about 65% of new books that come out now are all
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Kevin OConnor: from self publishers, self writers, and self-published authors
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Kevin OConnor: so much to learn, so much dialogue there. So I'm I'm doing that. I've then doing
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Kevin OConnor: presentations from a business or personal or educational sense what it means to come out, what it means to and done quite a few podcasts in that area. And like, I said, it's not coming out for me. It's going to and how do you? How do you navigate those new ident that this
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Kevin OConnor: refreshed identity you find
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Kevin OConnor: so? And then the navigating grief. That's another topic that I can talk about, too, and
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Kevin OConnor: pull in a lot of other resources for that for people to to discover and to learn from. So those are some ideas that are percolating in my head right now. So.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, and I've seen Kevin speak with through a video when he spoke at the Elgin Rotary Club, and it was was phenomenal. He's got a great family story. How can people get a hold of you, Kevin?
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Kevin OConnor: The best so they can. They can go to on my website.
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Kevin OConnor: well, couple of places. Kevin O'connorauthor, dot com. That's 1 website, Kevin O'connor. That's my website, Kevin O'connorauthor dot com, or then go to my email
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Kevin OConnor: Koco. 7, 3, 5, 1 at Gmail.
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Kevin OConnor: or just give me a call or a text. (815) 546-1076, and I can. We can get things going. I've and I've got a presence on Instagram and Linkedin and Facebook and all the different ways you can get a hold of people through those networks I've got. I'm on there, too. So those are all tools, communication tools, that they can get a hold of me.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. Well, when I was when I was 75 on January 9, th
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Jack Hubbard: one of the things I gave as a gift to to folks on Linkedin that reached out and said, Hey, happy birthday! Was a list of 75 of the best books I've ever read, and this book is on it.
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Jack Hubbard: Oh, wonderful! Oh, grief!
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Jack Hubbard: It's a phenomenal book
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Jack Hubbard: by very good friend Kevin O'connor for 60 years, Kevin. Thanks so much for being with us today, and all the best for a wonderful 2025.
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Kevin OConnor: Thank you. Jack. Thank you. Thank you.
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Jack Hubbard: Okay.
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Kevin OConnor: Okay, thank you. I get got fooled by your timeline there a couple of times.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, no, I I'm sure. Yeah. And I was gonna.
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Kevin OConnor: No, I think I responded, okay.
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Jack Hubbard: I always have to do this ahead and like when I do one in October, and it's gonna be the week before Christmas. They have to say, Happy merry Christmas, October. But I have to do these ahead of time because
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Jack Hubbard: I gotta get them all in the can
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Jack Hubbard: by by the middle of January, through the Feb. February and into March, because moving is gonna be hellacious. And we're gonna movers, of course, but still there's a lot of work to do, and I certainly don't want Kathy to do it all by herself.
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Kevin OConnor: So how much?
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Kevin OConnor: How much are you downsizing.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, I mean we went from.
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Kevin OConnor: This. You've been out of the other house for almost 2 years now. Right? So you, yeah, yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: About a year and so we downsized a lot with furniture and things like that. But the house is actually
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Jack Hubbard: bigger than this one because it's got that office in it, or man cave, or whatever it's called. And Steve built Me a podcast studio, which is which we're gonna outfit, which is kinda cool, that's all. Upstairs. It's about 23400 downstairs couple of bedrooms. You know the great room in the kitchen dining room.
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Jack Hubbard: But it's it's manageable, it's it's a manageable home. And I'll tell you, Kevin. Steve is our true artist. He's just done some amazing things. It's been.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah, he does. He does. He's he's very, very good, very good.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. So when you come up next year we'll have to. You have a beer in the house.
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Kevin OConnor: Okay.
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Jack Hubbard: And then I will see you. I'll put out an email for the 23.rd
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Jack Hubbard: You want to go to Paul's.
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Kevin OConnor: That's fine. Yeah,
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Jack Hubbard: Go to Paul's at 8 o'clock, and I'll let everybody know, and whoever wants to go go.
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Kevin OConnor: Do you mind if we invite Gary?
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Jack Hubbard: No, I think it's great. I think it get out of the house.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, no, yeah, I think he does. And and I'll if you're okay with. I'll invite bugs, too, if you're okay with that.
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Jack Hubbard: Sure, that's fine.
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Jack Hubbard: Okay, okay, alright.
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Kevin OConnor: I'll let him know
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Kevin OConnor: the Yeah, it'd be good to be. See you on the 23rd at Paul's and recreate things. There, that's good.
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Kevin OConnor: How was your how were your golf excursions this season? How'd they go.
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Jack Hubbard: Great I had the best I had, the best golf year I've ever had. I think I played probably 70 rounds I got. I got a lot of a lot of golf in the golf in September with the guys was great. We it was. It's interesting. We've got a Guy, and I don't. I don't know if you've ever met him. Rick Nevins is.
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Kevin OConnor: Know. Nick, yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: And Nevs is a great guy, but he is a very traditional golfer, and he's a country clubber, so he's out of Kishwaukee.
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Jack Hubbard: and he is.
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Jack Hubbard: He's a stickler for rules.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, he had his rotator cuff on his shoulder done, and he couldn't go.
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Kevin OConnor: Hmm.
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Jack Hubbard: And we all agree, and so we only had 7, which is fine. And Mark Noel Knowles had something. He had a hernia, he had hernia surgery right after we got back from
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Jack Hubbard: from Michigan, and so he couldn't drive, so all he did was put the ball out in the middle of the fairway, and then chip and putt. So we really had 2 threesomes, and Mark would kind of go back and forth, and it was really the best we've had. There were no arguments, no sniping, nothing. And there wasn't much of it. Go on. But Big Z and and Nevs are are the best golfers, and they but they're very, very competitive.
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Jack Hubbard: and so it gets to be. It gets to be an issue we had. Westie does a trivia contest every year and so we had fun with that. We play cards, and we, you know, we go to bed early a lot a lot earlier than we used to, but it was fun. And then up here, you know, I played through October. It was. The weather was great, and I've got a bunch of guys up here that I play with
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Jack Hubbard: that. That I've gotten to know pretty well. So I've got 2 groups that I play with, and it's been fun. I've enjoyed it a lot.
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Kevin OConnor: You just where you play country club here.
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Jack Hubbard: No, I play at the Highlands, you know. I, Bob and I got out of the club in oh, 9, because we thought the recession was gonna be really bad, and as it turned out, we we were busier than ever. So and I don't know anybody over there anymore. So I play with just I I like to play with guys. I know that we play Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I haven't played Friday because Friday's
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Jack Hubbard: house day and Steve over. But it's been fun. I've I've really enjoyed it. And I I was on the 18th hole, and
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Jack Hubbard: I'm there in 3, and I'm probably 7 feet away, and if I sink the putt I break 80 for the 1st time, and I missed the putt. But I had. I had low eighties a lot, and my game is a lot better. It's it's I'm having a really really good time with it.
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Jack Hubbard: Good! Good.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. And I've got people are calling like crazy. And I I'm trying to limit my travel to 2 days a month. Starting in March. I've got a Florida trip
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Jack Hubbard: Fort Myers on January 10th I leave on my birthday and fly out one day class there. And then I'm not gonna do anything until March. We I want to get settled and and get get this rental
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Jack Hubbard: repainted, and, you know, cleaned and everything. And then our new house.
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Jack Hubbard: It's gonna be a nightmare for a while. You know you've moved.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: It's tough.
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Kevin OConnor: So. So what are you looking to have moving day?
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Kevin OConnor: Well, I hope. February first.st
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Kevin OConnor: Okay.
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Jack Hubbard: Like to be in by super bowl steve thinks that's very doable. And so we'll see.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: So you're paying.
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Kevin OConnor: Is the Cathy is the general contractor.
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Jack Hubbard: She is. Yeah, and she is she
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Jack Hubbard: she. We went out yesterday, and we are out for 7Â h looking at lighting and handles and and stuff, and she really knows what she wants, and she's she and Steve are a really good team. They work together very well.
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Kevin OConnor: so.
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Jack Hubbard: It's all good. Leon's good.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah, he's good. He he's walked in the background a minute. Oh, there's the dog over here, and.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I see the dog.
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Kevin OConnor: Yes.
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Jack Hubbard: In a couple of.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah, yeah, that that keeps she keep. The dog keeps us busy. She's got this. Well, we talked about pets a little bit during our conversation, but she's.
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Jack Hubbard: See that!
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Kevin OConnor: I talk about the concept of pre grief or anticipatory grief, and
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Jack Hubbard: With Taylor, too.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah. And so this she just. And we we took her for her checkup a couple of weeks ago. She's got coronary stuff.
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Kevin OConnor: and the vet came in and said, well, you've got one sick dog. Your dog is so sick, but she's doing so, but she's stable for the last 8 months, you know, so, but she's got and she so Leanne just got back from a walk. We she usually walks a mile and a half a day. They you know the vet initially. When this came about I wouldn't. We wouldn't walk her anymore. But now we kept walking her. So they just say that you know the membrane on her heart is just so thin that it's just gonna
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Kevin OConnor: go one day and then that'll be it. So yeah, we just we wake up in the morning and think, oh, we got one more day with her. Okay, so.
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Jack Hubbard: And that's it. And we're not gonna get another dog. Well, you won't get another dog, will you? Will you?
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Kevin OConnor: I I could say that. But who knows what will happen?
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Jack Hubbard: I said to Kathy, if if a dog
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Jack Hubbard: across the street and you know, was on our front porch, I'd certainly look for the owner, but I'd keep it otherwise.
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Jack Hubbard: We enjoy our freedom. It's it's really challenging to have a dog, as you know.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, yeah.
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Jack Hubbard: But what do you do when you travel.
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Kevin OConnor: Oh, we! We have a lean son Jason and his wife and their family. They take the dog, and they have. That's how we got Rosie in the 1st place, because
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Kevin OConnor: Rosie appeared at their doorstep one day in their community, and somebody said, Is this your dog? And they said no. And anyway, Rosie stuck around.
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Kevin OConnor: and so then they said, why don't you guys take her? That was 6 or 7 years ago, so but he. She's always had an affinity for Jason so.
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Kevin OConnor: and that whole household. So they take her when we're out of town. If we can get everything. Sometimes we plan our trips based on when they're available, too. So and then then they have a dog similar breed to her. So then we take their dog. So it's a trade off.
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Kevin OConnor: We don't. We've never. We've never put her in a kennel or anything like that. We just we just wait to. If if Jay and Orly are busy at the time we think we're gonna go. We just rearrange our dates.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah.
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Kevin OConnor: So we we just do it that way. So we're fortunate to have that. So what's the rest of your day look like? What do you got.
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Jack Hubbard: I've got a couple of sales presentations for the modern banker.
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Jack Hubbard: I've I do something I I like to write on Linkedin, and tomorrow I've got a article that I'm going to write, called Santa Banker, and it's a it's a bank that I've
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Jack Hubbard: known since the early nineties.
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Jack Hubbard: and I went over I went to the bank, was doing training there, and saw the regional manager in North Carolina.
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Jack Hubbard: And I said, well, it was in the toward the holidays. I said, What were you gonna do? And he said, You know, the 24th we all get together and we have nobody does banking. It's just food and liquor. And all this stuff? I said, well.
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Jack Hubbard: why don't you make some sales calls beforehand? He says, jeez, don't you ever quit, I said, well, wait.
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Jack Hubbard: What I mean is, go buy a couple of business books
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Jack Hubbard: and have your bankers drop the business books off to prospects that they're having trouble getting into seeing
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Jack Hubbard: before they come to the office.
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Jack Hubbard: No, but our bankers gonna do that, and and this is their 30th year of doing it, and they just generate all kinds of business doing it. So I call it Santa banker. And I'm gonna write about it tomorrow. So I've got you know. And then Fridays are Fridays are always Steve days. And you know, I've got calls here and there. I've got another podcast interview tomorrow morning. It's actually pretty busy, you know. It gets it. It's busy.
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Jack Hubbard: Oh, so but it's fun. I'm having a good time. I try not to do anything in the afternoon, so that if Kathy needs something, or we need want to go
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Jack Hubbard: launching or whatever we do.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you know. But that doesn't always work out.
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Kevin OConnor: Okay, just try to keep it open.
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Kevin OConnor: Yeah.
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Kevin OConnor: Well, I will see you on the 23.rd Then.
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Jack Hubbard: I look forward to it. Thanks for doing.
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Kevin OConnor: Hey? Thanks for doing this, Jack. Thanks for doing this. Thank you.
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Jack Hubbard: Thanks for being for all your
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Jack Hubbard: February. Yeah. February. Have a nice, have a nice holiday, and we'll.
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Kevin OConnor: Alright! I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Alrighty, thanks a lot. Bye, bye.
