He is gone: an obituary

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest — Hamlet

Jim Moody, 1972-73, at the boathouse pier, Central Park, NYC

James Andrew Moody, age just 65, died this day October 9, 2013, of esophageal cancer metastasized and then diffused throughout his liver. A memorial funeral service will be held Saturday, October 19th, noon, at Everly-Wheatley Funeral Home, 1500 W Braddock Rd, Alexandria, VA 22302, where his remains will be cremated. Friends and acquaintances of Jim and his family are welcome.

He was born in Hampshire, England, on October 3rd, 1948; his father was Sidney Moody, aged 42, his mother Grace Ellen Hodgson Moody, aged 37. Three years later his parents had a daughter, Rosemarie, who married Maurice Hayes, and became a Vicar in Leeds. Rosemarie and Maurice have three daughters, and grandchildren. Jim is also survived by his wife, Ellen Moody and daughters, Laura, married to Robert Powers, and Isobel.

He grew up in Southampton, England, in a small house on Radstock Road. He attended King Edward VI, a grammar school which he would tell you was part of the “headmaster’s conference” which he reached by bicycle. The phrase meant it was a sort of public school, where he learnt much Latin. While there he learned to write English beautifully. In later years he kept up the love of reading he first developed during this time, and his interest in classical literature and the ancient world. He enjoyed Southampton and its environs as a place near the water, connected to ships. His heritage included generations of men who were sailors, and from the middle of the 19th century people who were servants in great houses (I have a house-keeping and recipe book from the mid-19th century); and people who owned and ran shops. His mother was an under-governess in a great house for a short while, but she said the life was one of continual servitude and repression, with little money to be gained, and when she got a job in Woolworth’s she felt the energy of (relative) independence. A favorite childhood book for her son was Kenneth Moore’s The Wind in the Willows and Jim would quote a famous line from it whenever he mentioned the book: “There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” He passed his O and A levels with an emphasis on science (himself he would have preferred to study music), and was accepted by Leeds University to read ceramics. He left after a year.

He met Ellen in 1968 and they were married October 6th, 1969; they enjoyed living in Leeds, but there was little opportunity to make a good salary for him, or to return to college; and she had an acceptance for Ph.D. work at the Graduate Center in NYC, so in May of 1970 they emigrated to NYC, where he took a job at Lerner Shops. Once there he went to college at night for a while, and then switched to going full-time. He graduated from Hunter College, and then went on to attempt a Ph.D. in Math at Columbia University, where after 4 years he was ABD (he had in fact done a dissertation) or MPhil, Mathematics. He had been teaching in the City University system (Hunter College), and decided he preferred a career as a computer scientist (then a new profession) and took a position in the Defense Department, and they moved to Alexandria, Virginia where they have lived ever since.

He became an expert in computer software, a valued program manager, ran a division, and eventually was a Chief Engineer in the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). For two summers he traveled to England to work with NATO; he traveled for his job, to Belgium, once to Spain. He retired at age 57, taught part-time for five years at George Mason University, and then retired completely. If you go to Ellen’s website, More about Ellen Moody, the structure built originally by Jim, you can see photos, a description of their environment, and a poem written in imitation of Kipling dedicated to Jim upon his retirement.

He very much enjoyed his retirement years: he loved to cook (following Elizabeth David), shop, plan outings, take long walks in parks, go regularly to a gym; a special deep love for him was opera and classical music and popular French chanteuses. He read music and enjoyed playing scores on the piano. He and Ellen also went to plays, concerts, loved to go to art shows in museums, and what lectures and conferences their shared interests took them to. Favorite film-makers included Ingmar Bergman. They traveled together, and took the children sometimes too: to Italy (4 weeks in Rome, to Ischia too), many times back to the British Isles (he kept aspects of his English identity intact, as a love of Earl Grey tea, English biscuits, being part of university clubs, like the Williams). They went twice to France (2 weeks in Paris) and in the US up to New England for a few summers, into Canada once.

He is and was much loved by his wife to whom he was a loving deeply congenial generous supportive protective husband, and by his daughters who his behavior was selfless and considerate towards. He did what he could to enable them to have personally satisfying & remunerative careers. He will be badly missed, is irreplaceable. He was a highly intelligent, kindly, and ethical or wise person, humane and liberal in all his attitudes. His moral courage and self-control was seen and remarkable during the whole of the terrible ordeal of cancer. The tenderly affectionate aspect of his nature was seen in how fond their pets were of him, first Llyr, part Beagle, who lived to be 12, and now two cats, 5 years old, a ginger tabby, Ian, and a tortoise, Clarissa. He had a witty sense of humor, and could capture truths about life in memorable phrases. His memory was stocked with phrases and until two days before he died he would make apt allusions to all sorts of reading.

He was proud to have risen in government, but he would have said his accomplishment in life was to have lived an existence where he fulfilled his nature, hurt no one knowingly insofar as this was possible, and did considerably better than remaining solvent. One of his jokes was ironically to compare himself to Mr Bonteen in Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux (Trollope was a great favorite and he felt for Bonteen). A favorite painter was Poussin; his favorite novelists included Anthony Powell and Proust, he liked to read memoirs, serious history, literary criticism (Shaw), for poetry in later years he turned to (among others) Basil Bunting (“O brave thrush”), William Empson (“Missing Dates”), John Betjeman (“Summoned by Bells”) and C.P. Cavafy (“Ithaca”).

1971-72, in our apartment in a brownstone, 76th street off Columbus Avenue, with Llyr our dog, I’m pregnant for the first time

Sylvia