Remembering Terry Moon
I’d like to share a little bit about my friend, Terry Moon, who passed away last week. Terry was an icon in the Oxford, Mississippi community, and he had a huge presence in a room. He was deeply loved.
Terry worked for twenty years as the head waiter at City Grocery, a lovely fine dining restaurant on the square in Oxford. He was friendly and funny and completely endearing. Everyone knew Terry, and often, out-of-towners who’d met Terry on a previous stay, would make a special trip to City Grocery just to see him.
I thought I’d share my first experience with Terry, as it’s my most poignant memory. I met him on the third day of my first visit to Oxford. I was visiting Oxford with the idea of possibly basing a new series of nudes there. My first visit was simply a time of getting to know some people and the feel of the place. Oxford opened its arms wide for me from the first moment, and by day three, several folks I’d not previously met had volunteered to pose for my paintings. My friends and I found ourselves at City Grocery, and like so many before me, I was already enamored with Oxford’s charms. Terry Moon was our waiter, and knowing seemingly everyone in the restaurant but me, he knew I must be a visitor. He asked what I was doing in town, and I mentioned I was looking to start a series of nudes. “Not me, not me!” This is the first thing I remember Terry saying that made me laugh. I assured him it was not my practice to simply ask people to pose. As we chatted, a gentleman named Wayne, whom I’d met earlier in the day, walked in, recognized me and waved. Terry noticed and asked how I knew Wayne, me being a newbie. He then excused himself to help Wayne, disappearing for a few minutes. When he returned, he leaned over, and a bit more quietly than before, asked if I take people with scars. This line resonates in my head. “Do you take people with scars?” What a beautiful, painful, vulnerable question. In his work clothes, Terry had no visible scars, but I understood his question and was honored by it. This is what the series was supposed to be about, about being human. Of course I take people with scars. People have scars and I want to work with people. Now, Terry meant physical scars, surgical ones, that testified to some of his life’s difficulties. That was important. It was his story. In my mind, the series was always partly going to be about the fact that we all have scars, visible or not.
I told Terry I would absolutely work with anyone with scars, and would love to work with him. He said “I’m in”. I handed him my card, and that was it. That was my entire first interaction with Terry, and it meant a lot to me. Regardless if he would’ve ever posed or not, he’d already shown his vulnerability and courage.
About a week later, I returned to Oxford to work with the models, including Terry. It was an incredible honor and I’m still amazed by everyone’s courage and their insights. Terry session went great and we got to know each other just a little bit, not much. He shared a story that made us all cry.
I finished the painting of Terry last year. I stepped back from the painting one day, when it was about two-thirds done, and a vision came to me. I step back to look at my painting progress many times every day, but I’d never had a vision mid-painting. I saw two bars of multi-colored words, one on either side of the canvas. The words “love dangerously”, a phrase I always loved, came to me. I wrote to Beth Ann Fennelly, another Oxfordian who’d posed for the series, and asked if she might be interested in helping with eight or nine perfect words. “RADICAL ROOTED RECKLESS ELASTIC ECSTATIC COMMITMENT TO LOVE”. I loved those words and I love that painting.
I’ve been to Oxford six or seven times in the last two years and I usually got to see Terry. We weren’t close, but we’d become friends, and I was honored to know him, and I will miss him.