Charlotte lost a hell of a guy on Thursday: Joe Sovacool. You probably didn't know him, but there's a good chance you've talked to him if you've ever called The Charlotte Observer newsroom. I worked with Solvacool when I was the Observer's entertainment editor in the early 2000s. There's a long tribute to him in my heart, but I won't write it here. Why? Because there couldn't be any better tribute to Sovacool than the one Observer columnist Tommy Tomlinson wrote in his blog today.
We often give the Observer a hard time here at CL. But sometimes the folks over there do things very, very right. Tommy begins his tribute to Sovacool with these moving paragraphs:
Joe Sovacool looked like Jesus and talked like jazz. I had no idea how old he was. Maybe 42, maybe 62. All I knew was that he was the coolest guy in the room. Our newsroom.Thousands of you heard his voice over the years. If you called the paper looking for somebody, or just to rant at the state of the world, Joe was more often than not the guy who picked up the phone. Charlotte Observer, Sovacool. Or just Observer, Sovacool. We joked that thousands of years from now, when robots ran the earth, Joe would still be there at his desk, soothing the angry robot callers in his soft and low late-night-DJ voice.
Observer, Sovacool.
(Read the rest of Tommy Tomlinson's tribute to Joe Sovacool here.)