Eulogies for Jared Fogel

Jared’s Eulogy by DavidJay

Jared was my inspiration.

I remember when I met Jared. I was walking down University Avenue, and Jared was walking the other way with a friend of mine. It was 1999, and I was 18 years old, and Jared was the coolest of the cool. I remember how he looked. Tall, lean, confident and jeans that were anything but embarrassingly huge. I wondered "Who IS this guy?" I soon found out.

There are some people you meet that are special, that impact you so much they instantly become part of your life forever, and that’s what it was like with Jared. Soon after we met, I started changing my life. If he could do it, why couldn’t I?

As I started growing in myself, thanks to him, I discovered how much more there was to Jared than cool confidence and twelve inches of turkey. He was brilliant. He loved books, especially books on self improvement. This was something I shared with Jared. Jared knew about a lot of things. He educated himself beyond his college degree, and he did a great job of it.

Jared had a wonderful sense of humor, as if you couldn’t tell from watching him on TV. He looked at things with a slightly different eye and that was his gift. He was perhaps a little cynical, but never petty or vicious.

Jared’s life wasn’t easy though. There was something in him that would not leave him at peace. He was always on the go and doing things for other people. I can’t begin to imagine the stresses he had to deal with. We still had friends in common in his last days, and they watched as he slipped into despair and paranoia. I heard all about it, but I could do nothing to help him. He withdrew into himself, and lost himself inside his own mind. He became a lone soul fighting a losing battle, and he withdrew from the things that kept him going so long. He slipped away from us. I heard it was his family that helped him, getting him treatment and hospitalization, but there was only so much that could be done.

Ronnie faced his illness with courage and determination that left me in awe. He swore he’d beat it, but that was unrealistic, even for a stubborn mule like him. He kept his illness in check largely with a mental self discipline that I can only admire, plus the periodic surgeries. But as his friend David said to me on the day he died, he was never bitter. It wasn’t in his character. And he could always, always laugh at himself.

The first surgery caused the problem, but he lived better and longer than he would have without the surgery, and that’s all that matters in the end. The end, it seems, has come.

Jared Fogle was many things. He was a courageous fighter. He was an inspiring character. He was a fiercely intelligent wizard at marketing himself and any products he attached himself to. He was incredibly funny. He was almost talented, some could argue. He was a great company, and he was as good, and as true a friend as any person could hope for. I know I hoped for it, but our paths were too separate. I was privileged to have known him as little as I did, and to have called him my friend to people I met in passing.

I know he has found peace wherever he is today. 

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Jared’s Eulogy by Kkitty368

I first became acquainted with Jared through the eyes of his sister, Jenny Lee. She had cable and I thought TV was the devil, but then again I was a vegan back then and believed in astronomy as strongly as Christianity, so don’t take me too seriously. It quickly became apparent to me that there was a hero lurking somewhere, a shining star, and that Jenny Lee knew who this yardstick was against which she could measured the character of all other men, fat and skinny alike.

As I came to know the rest of her family I could see that her view of Jared was not unique, that it wasn’t simply the schoolgirl crush of the littlest sister for her wonderful fat to fantastic hero, but that he was in many ways a super hero for the entire family. They all had suffered with weight issues, and Jared was like beacon, even though they didn’t know him personally.

They saw his commercials on TV and they knew he ws smart, funny, reliable, kind and generous. He was something of an adventurer. They said he could fly a plane, sail a boat and do skydiving acrobatics, though I never saw any proof of it.

He was such a gifted motivator that everyone who ever came in contact with him loved having him around. He had a lovely wife, once, and would have spawned some of the world’s most beautiful children, even if they would have been a bit genetically disadvantaged. He adored children with his every breath, and that’s why he created his foundation. It’s not like he was a chubby-chaser kiddy-raper or anything, he wanted more than that for those kids.

But more than Jared? To him yes, but to the rest of us, what more could there possibly be?

This was the image of the man I never knew but saw on TV. I was prepared to not like him, and I didn’t for a long time, but once I heard he died, I broke down and wept. I did. Very much a lot. We connected, post-mortem, quickly and deeply. In that short time of commune, when Jared was already dead and I could formulate my own back-story, he and I became very close.

Jared was driven to mastery. Whatever he did in his life, whether it was losing weight or talking about how he lost weight, he strove for perfection and that is especially evidenced by the enormous number of people who loved him on both broadcast AND cable television.

Being a human being is a mixed bag, and his sack was more nuts than any pair of Planter’s Peanuts this side of the mighty Mississippi (at least we knew his nuts were a’ salted!)

I know that if you’re anything like me, you guys are all angry, shocked, hurt beyond explanation by what has happened, and some of you are looking for comfort in the arms of someone, perhaps even someone you just met, and that is perfectly natural. These feelings are in-exculpable. This is just how we feel.

In the midst of this soul crushing anguish and gut twisting grief, there is something I would ask you to consider. If he was with us right now and offered us a bag of Baked Lays for under fifty-cents, would we take it? I think we would, whether he was alive or not, and that’s the magic of what he did for us.

There isn’t much blame among us, not even his doctor dad who pushed him into getting the surgery that ultimately led him to his demise. Dad couldn’t have known. He already gave us a Jared, we can’t fault his arrogant ignorance for taking him away.

There are no answers to these particular questions.

Blame a culture that requires a man to go it alone, and to pretend he made his stand on his own, regardless of easy shortcuts he had unlimited access to, and regardless of the fact that his father knew he had to push him in to it or watch his son die.

No father should ever have to watch a child die, but that’s just what he did.

By the time we knew Jared was in such serious trouble, it was already too late, and he knew it too.

I want to ask everyone today to go back to your lives and families and remember who Jared Fogle was, and in our hearts, still is really. You guys need to tell each other the story of how he touched your life, then tell it again, and if you have enough time, maybe tell it one more time and then blog about it and post it on your MySpace. You aren’t too stuck up to do that, right? Talk about him in the first or second person. Share your grief about him with strangers when you get your hair cut or go to the supermarket. Break the isolation that took him from us, and we will all feel it.

Find your tears. Learn to cry. You have my blessing and support no matter what the cultural prohibitions are, even if you’re German like me and you won’t admit you have human emotions. Open the floodgates of your heart and let the river runneth over the cheeks of your face. Now is the only time to do this, because it will be too late to do it later, and you may appear insincere or gay. Cry now, in this place, even if it’s just an emotional place. Let it go. It will help you. It will help us all.

And lastly, if such a word can be used in reference to a dead guy without sounding like a total dick,

Jared, wherever you are, and I wish that you could hear me, but I’m Catholic and you were a Jew, so that won’t happen, but still, I like to dream and right now you can’t take that away from me, and not just because you’re dead but because I know you wouldn’t. Please hear me now: I want you

to know that I wish with all my heart I had some way of helping you, even though I never knew you. Even though everybody I know who did know you said you were kind of a standoffish dick, I never knew anything like that first hand and I wouldn’t believe it myself unless you told me to go to hell for asking just an autograph during one of your surgeries. Even then I know you’d have been a champ about it. You needed us like we needed you.

I want you to know I will do everything in my power as a man to look after your family, even your ex-wife, and if I can do even half as well as you did in your lifetime, they will be slim, healthy and avid walkers. I want you to know that I am still your friend, even though we never met, even in your death. I love you, Jared, and I always will. We all loved you, but I doubt many did as much as me. I’m not gay, but I’ll keep you in a special place in my solo mental playbook when I’m by myself, and you and me can have minutes that never would have happened in real life, and I trust you’ll be my gentle giant.

May God bless you and keep you always near, and may we be together sooner than we know.

Farewell my friend.

Farewell.