One of Those Special People
Occasionally in life, we get to meet someone special – in the sense that looking back we count ourselves lucky for even having met them. That we are somehow better people for having known them. One of these people for me was Mary Jo Mueller, who I called Jo.
Around 2001 or 2, I was doing some freelance graphic design work after the software company I had worked for succumbed to the bursting of the “Tech Bubble.” I was taking crazy little odd design jobs and somehow managed to do some work for a little company in Denver. Jo was doing some writing work for the company so I got to work with her directly. She was warm, smart, a helluva good writer and I adored her.
I was sad when she and her husband Don moved away, though we occasionally kept in touch, with Don’s help as the emailer of friends. They had moved home to Joplin, MO to care for her ailing mother. I wondered, after her mother’s passing, if they would continue their journeys and come back to Colorado or California or one of the other places they had lived.
But they stayed in Joplin and, as my mentor Crista Cloutier would say, she “bloomed where she was planted.” Jo went to work as the Executive Director at Spiva Center for the Arts, where she led the arts charge in her community for 12 years. She’s been hailed an “Arts Hero” by the Joplin Globe and after a slurry of community awards, described as one of the most influential women of Joplin.
But what’s most remarkable to me, and maybe anyone who ever met her, is that I just saw this sparkly light in her eyes when she saw me. I heard warmth and laughter in her voice, when she spoke to me – it had a softness to it. I felt comfortable in her presence. I have to imagine that was the key to her many accomplishments – that people loved to be around her. She didn’t parade her own successes – but she always applauded the feats of others. And she created a safe haven through the arts that became especially healing after the massive 2011 EF5 tornado that pummeled their community.
She really was a hero, but she did it not in a “fighter” type of way. More the loving kind. I hope to live by following her example.