02/26/2025
Joe was the unofficial DJ at Kaizen most Monday - Thursday mornings, and he was excellent. He had a playlist for every mood and nailed it 99.99% of the time without needing input or direction.
We’ve had the doors up every day this week and today I connected to the speaker. I was looking for the perfect soundtrack for the vibe and found a playlist called “80s stripper mix” - it’s solid. I think Joe would approve.
Joe was so instrumental in shaping my vision for what Kaizen has and will continue to become. His wife, Kelly, would tell you that finding the gym after his cancer battle gave him purpose again, and in some ways helped him heal.
What I never fully understood until he was gone was that Joe finding the gym helped me heal, too. He came into my life in a time when I trusted nearly no one outside my very small circle and somehow, without me even realizing it, become a true friend to me. I can’t tell you when it happened, or a defining moment. It “just was”, and it felt like it had always been. That’s how Joe moved in this life. He showed me good people still exist in this world and that it was safe to learn to develop new relationships and trust again. When we lost him, I cried with the members I had to tell and they cried, too. I wasn’t the only one Joe had befriended and helped along the way.
His life motto was (iykyk). He lived that. The last few months in the gym were undeniably hard for him and yet he never stopped showing up. It never made him bitter, or prone to complaining, or negative. He was a fighter to the end. I hope to carry that on half as well as he did and create a place for others to learn to do the same.
Joe gifted me part of a tree of life that matches the one that hung in his personal sanctuary, his backyard bar. I have it hanging in the lobby as a reminder to me that Kaizen is, and will continue to be, more than “just a gym” -
sanctuary
community
hope
growth
perseverance
restoration
- all these things grow here, and in no small part due to the mark Joe left on the lives of some of the Kaizen OGs, not the least of which was me. You’d love it here, big guy. Miss you more than words could ever say.
