Hooray! jay/day makes me relevant.

Stevan was part of one of the groups I met in New York through Paul Stabile. I met Stevan through Paul Stabile at chiat/day advertising. This particular group within chiat/day included Stevan Alburty, Steve Klosterman, and Rodney 'Rod' Rhodes, and later on John Dunlap whom I already knew from Boston.

While living and struggling in NYC all of us were in some way connected through Rod and Paul and I think we all had Stevan to thank for somehow introducing the rest of us into the support culture of c/d. Even back then Stevan was always reaching out to others. 

More on Stevan later.

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I first met Steve Klosterman during a visit there in 1983 and he had a small cleaning business that I eventually took over that year. Steve was a great guy with a wonderful sense of humor and I recall he and some of the others were all seminarians, or artists, or both at one point or another.

Unknown to me was that Dunlap and Paul were friends at seminary (or was it the monastery?) a few years before. Dunlap was a hilariously funny man with a great heart. John had this great voice. John Dunlap was a Cantor in a Greek Orthodox Church even though he wasn't raised in the Orthodox tradition, nor was he of Greek descent. His voice a musical instrument and he played it with great spirit and talent.

I remember Rod as the teacher with his masters degree in art, his teaching experiences, and his background of having grown up with a father who was a Methodist(?) minister. Rodney did lots of odd jobs for the Agency and for Jay himself. Sometimes I would help Rod out at the homes of Jay and that was an experience. Jay had some great art and stuff in the homes. It was an education. I also remember Rod collected Mission Style furniture. Rod was one talented man and he is sorely missed by those who knew him.

 Rod also had some fabulous art that Jay had showing on the agency floors. I remember later seeing Rod's style of  boxes/sculptures become famous by some other artist doing Rod's thing. 

Ahh the early days of my experiences in NYC. Stevan was always busy learning the latest computer network 'thing' and writing the great American novel when I met him, and I was comfortable being clueless in America stumbling from one thing to another and trying to start a business. Life intervened and now all these years later he's married and living the life of Reilly (whoever he was) scuba diving in Saint Bart's, and I'm about to take a journey I thought about way back then in the early eighties.