I filled out start paperwork on the Papal stage for A. Terzi Productions in 1995, when Emiliano, whom I met in December 1993, brought me to Central Park. I did not work on the Pope show. I cannot remember how long it was before I was booked to work at the Palladium and told to find Kelly Britt, who was the head on the first job I worked on for Terzi. I am sure I made a great impression when I said I would need to leave his show by 6:00pm so that I could make a show call at the Joyce Theater where I was on staff, but being paid 50% less.

Basically, any chance after that when I could to pick up some extra days I would. I must have met Tim on another Terzi gig during this time. He would have had long hair. Frank Marty had long hair. It seemed like all of the heads had long hair (except for Chris Martin) so I figured that I would grow my hair long, too. I was never blessed with hair that grew long, but if this was the Terzi way, I would embrace it.

By May 1997 I had worked for a dozen not-for-profit arts companies, and it was clear that the not-for-profit world and I were not a good match. After the last of these, a brief tour with Dance Theater of Harlem which secured me a IATSE card, I called up Nick Yang in May 1997 and said I was now available full time. I spent much of that summer with Nkosi, Duncan Raymond, Karen Ludeman, and Otis Howard clamoring around the grid at VH-1 earning a nickname few people these days still use; Nkosi, Junior, Karen and Tommy Robinson being the exceptions. Otis started to hire me and recommended me to others for outside gaffer work. In November 1997 I did three Oprah Winfrey shows at the Manhattan Center with Sarah Fergusson, Janet Jackson, and Paul McCartney.

By December I had had a great run of work with Terzi. It was the best job I had ever had, and I loved the people I worked with, and I was making contacts that led to even cooler things. I had a job offer come up to spend a few weeks in Paris for almost no money but a place to stay and a per diem. I was nervous about leaving a good thing with Terzi for another that was definitely short-term. Encouraged by Karen, I asked Tony about it. He said, “Don’t worry about it. Go! Go and learn some stuff, have a great time. There will be a job here when you get back.”

No boss had ever given me that kind of freedom before, and I’ve loved him and Terzi/Top Knotch ever since.

As Tony phased himself out of the company and more and more of my checks were coming from Top Knotch Productions, I was concerned as to who would care for the company, and who would look after me the way Tony had, and all those who looked up to Tony had. Karen spoke on my behalf every chance she got, and it meant I got to work, and head up projects. But now what?

As I worked more and more with Timmy, who was Top Knotch, it was clear why Tony had made his choice. A worker and a boss, as Tony had been. He commanded the respect of the people he worked with, and the clients he worked for, and if he had Tony’s blessing, that was the kicker.

I would follow Tim for years after that. Terzi and then Top Knotch had offered me more than a job or a paycheck, but responsibility, and a sense of place. Each time I worked on a job that was bigger than anything I had worked on before, it was with either for Top Knotch, or through contacts who had known me as one of Timmy’s guys. September 1998 he offered me the head electrician job on a big show at the NY Hilton that, per the client, was understaffed. We were in seven ballrooms including one we did not have access to until 5pm the day of the event. It was 1700 cuts of color, 1100 amps per leg, and by the end of it Timmy and Ray had sent more than 30 guys above the original call to help with the load out. I worked 40 hours straight, and Timmy was in the truck, loading. Timmy had your back. Always.

I did an overnight call on a project called Quebec New York at the World Financial Center on September 10^th, 2001 and we had another all nighter scheduled for that Tuesday. I was the electrician, but that night/morning there was a scaffold to build and decks to cut before the business day started, so I’m wearing a harness, and running a saw, and covered in sawdust from head to toe. Timmy and I laughed about it so much that he insisted on taking a picture at about 7 o’clock in the morning. And then he asked me if I wanted to stay on and work the day shift, too.

I declined. Karen’s birthday party was that day, and I figured I could get some rest, go to the party, and be ready for the focus call that night. Plus the Canadian electricians were jerks and had no paperwork, and doing 40 hours straight with them didn’t sound like fun at all. I woke up to the phone ringing after 11am; the towers were gone, and the hardest part of that day was thinking that my friends were gone, too. I don’t have any idea how many times I tried to make contact with Ray, who was furiously trying to reach everyone, too. I think I was caught totally off guard when I called Tim’s cell phone and he answered, and he gave me more of an update on people than anyone else had.

Work didn’t matter after that. We all knew it would be a while before any clients had jobs again, but what I knew was that I didn’t want to work unless it was for Top Knotch. The first job that came back which put a bunch of us back to work was a tribute show, and it was like a family reunion. Seeing people you had only spoken to, or had last worked with before 9/11. In November I went downtown for the first time to recover the gear from the Financial Center. Work had brought me down there in the first place, and now I was going back to work---for Top Knotch. Sometime during that load-out (salvage) was when I knew we would be OK. We spent our time inside with dust masks on, looking out at the pit which was still burning, but outside, as they carved I-beams out of the façade of the AmEx building, Timmy and his crew were throwing a football around on the plaza like kids, and it felt great.

By then I would follow Tim anywhere. In February 2002 was the World Economic Forum which had switched from Davos to New York City, and there was a big party on all floors of the New York Stock Exchange. Security was so tight that it made more sense to spend the night at the Exchange rather than go through the line again. I ran a hit squad that went to each room to fix whatever needed to be fixed, and we made such a good impression on Tony Melchior, one of the production managers, that he practically demanded to have me run his summer crew, even though Tim had already picked me for the job.

That led to five seasons of Evening Stars in Battery Park, itself a series that grew from September 11^th as the stage had been on the plaza of the World Trade Center that morning. Lisa and I met during the run in 2002. Sometime after that Tim gave me the best advice about getting married and having a family, and I followed him into it, and Lisa and I were married by Evening Stars 2004. By Stars 2006 I had followed him into fatherhood. By 2008, like him, I was the father of girls. My youngest daughter’s middle name is Ava. Pretty much everything I know and love grows out of the relationship I have had with Top Knotch, and I have Tim to thank for it.

Our business relationship was as such that when he asked me what I wanted to be paid for something, I would say, “Tim this is how this is going to go…You are going to name a fee, and I am going to say OK.”

Of course, things didn’t always go as planned, and a confession on my part is due. I wanted to work for Tim so much that I would be offered jobs and accept them even though I knew I would suck at them. I never had the diplomacy he did, nor the patience, nor the self control. He could be protective without being fierce. Diplomatic without the confrontation. I could never extract myself gracefully from things before I had stuck my foot in my mouth or worse. I would go home at night so upset with myself for losing it, or potentially screwing it up for Tim and the company, and wishing I had never said yes in the first place. The last job I did for Tim was one of those. The last thing I wrote to Tim on September 18^th was, “I think I should resign.”

It’s really taken me 5 years to get to this point---an unwinding of loyalty, nostalgia, love, and need. I transitioned out of Top Knotch by starting another business to step away because I couldn’t do the same thing for anyone else, and then I got lucky at the right time to find a place doing what I really like. But nothing can replace how good it felt to be a part of Top Knotch.

I last saw Tim on my 40^th birthday. I wasn’t working for Top Knotch but for the client directly, and he was the staging supervisor on a show that was too big to fit into the space, and it had beaten him up. I had just taken the test for Local 52 and it had beaten me up. Kelly Britt, my first Terzi head, had started calling me for 52 work at the end of 2008, and all of my hopes for a new direction in my career were dependent on the outcome of that test. There was comfort in seeing Tim, that even if I left the day-to-day parts of Top Knotch that it was still likely that I might get an assignment in which I would thrive. I trusted Tim with that. I was looking forward to growing old with him talking about our girls.

Losing Tim as a friend, a boss, a teacher of work, of work ethic and of family is crushing and cruel. No matter what the job was, he was the reason I wanted to go to work. I will always owe him that; I feel like I owe him everything.

I miss you, my friend,

Jim McNeal

PS

Lisa worked with Tim more recently than I. Again it was a show that was oversized. She described it to him as “trying to paint your studio apartment with all of your furniture still inside.” Timmy laughed and improved on the thought by saying it is like “moving a three bedroom apartment into a studio apartment, and then trying to paint it.”