As Aubrey would have said on an occasion like this, “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln.

I don’t think that there is any doubt that Aubrey made his life count.  I will get the cliches over with.  He led his life to the fullest, he was a one of a kind, and they broke the mold with Aubrey.  But Aubrey was anything but cliched; he was one of a kind and really did live his live to the fullest and as far as I can tell the mold was obliterated when they made him.  He carried with him a magnetism and radiance that was palpable.  He was fearless, brilliant and engaging, inquisitive and fascinated with the world around him.  He was hilarious and unforgettable.

Aubrey was born into a small farming family in northern Arkansas and spent most of his childhood working on the farm, coon hunting, and causing mischief, usually with his oldest friend Glen Worlow and brother-in-law Colbert Gill.  He was one of two children along with his older sister Doris.  His father was a farmer, a kind and simple man who loved and provided for his family, who taught his son the value of hard work and getting up early, which my father would do for the rest of his life.  (On a wild week he and I spent in Belize when I was 17, after the night I came the closest to getting a tattoo, with him I might add, he was still asleep at 8am the next day and I thought something must be wrong).   His mother was the indomitable and irrepressible spark of the family and by all accounts, he took after her.  From her he drew his strength and inherited his loquacious manner that would become one of his trade marks.  

He left home three days after his 17th birthday to join the Army.  He had always done well in school, and I suspect he knew that he was probably smarter than most of his classmates, but he had never really stood out as a student, school wasn’t his thing and never would be.  It was in the Army, where routine testing showed him to be highly adept at mathematics and logic, that his already brewing confidence was fortified.  He was sent to crypto school and became a cryptographer stationed in Frankfurt, Germany in what was the pre-cursor to the National Security Agency. In the army he would meet another lifelong friend, Joe Rocket. It was in Europe, also, that his sense of style began to take shape.  As we all know, Aubrey was a stylish man.  

Upon his return from the Army, Aubrey spent a few years as a commercial loan officer in Memphis where he quickly developed an understanding of how the financial markets worked and eventually took a job with United Municipal Investment Company trading bonds, where over the course of two years he became one of the company’s top salesmen. It was during this time he decided that if he wasn’t going to earn a college degree, he was going to make up for it by reading, he was a voracious reader, finishing 5 newspapers every morning, usually before 5:30am, trade publications during the day and Beuwolf at night.  It was at United Municipal that he met his soon to be business partners the late Phil Hibbard and Jerry Weeks.  In 1967 Aubrey, Phil and Jerry formed Hibbard, O’Connor & Weeks.  Over the next 15 years Aubrey helped to steer and grow H.O.W. into one the most successful bond trading companies in Memphis and eventually in the entire country.  They opened branches in Chicago, New York, Ft. Lauderdale and Houston, Texas.  After several years heading the New York office he would eventually move to Texas, where he would live for the next 20 years.

It was during the H.O.W. heyday that my Dad was able to devote his attention to racing cars.   An accomplished motorcycle racer in the Army, he worked his way up through the racing ranks, eventually winning the Mid-South mini-stock championship, setting numerous course records along the way and where he would meet Roy Jones, his pit boss and another lifelong friend.  This success would bring the attention of NASCAR and lead to his eventual competition in numerous NASCAR events, famously (to me anyway) beating A.J Foyt in a grueling race at Daytona (no matter that A.J. blew his engine, racing is racing).  He was always a thrill seeker and speed was his thrill of choice.  He lied about my age when I was 16 so that we could go skydiving together.

Aubrey loved Texas. He met my mother Morgan there, the first real love of his life and his third wife and befriended her brother Brien, another longtime running buddy.  He enjoyed the last years of H.O.W.’s tremendous success there and fathered an extremely handsome and brilliant son as well.  However, he had tumultuous times in Texas.  Riding into Houston on a wave of success, experiencing the pinnacle of his career, his entrepreneurial spirit coupled with the fever of the oil boom, led him to sell out of H.O.W. and let it all ride on oil in the late ‘70s.  This bet did not pay off, as it didn’t for many a heartbroken Texan.  He would lose the fortune he had spent a decade and a half building.  He would get divorced.  He moved back to Houston from Victoria, Texas in 1985 with his clothes, his suburban and $1,000 in his bank account.  

Now, for some people, this unfortunate chain of events might lead one to get disheartened, but not Aubrey, he was the eternal optimist and always brimming with confidence.  He came from nothing, so this was not new territory for him. Having made so many friends and launched so many carers in the bond business,  in short order he was working for an old bond trading friend at a company he had founded, Government Securities Corporation, and soon became the Executive Vice President and Managing Director where he would remain for the next 8 years.  I always thought it was quite a comeback, and if you knew Aubrey you know he loved a comeback, and an underdog, as he orchestrated the latter and was the former at various times in his life.

He retired from GSC in 1995 and moved back to Arkansas to live next to his mother in the foothills of the Ozarks.  As always, he enjoyed tremendously this phase of his life.  He spent his time riding horses, camping out, traveling, managing his Newport farm, hanging out with old friends, drinking moonshine and partying in Memphis.  One of his favorite pastimes was to hang 3 or 5 or 10 sticks of dynamite up in the woods behind his house with a 30 minute fuse on it.  He’d light it and stroll up to the gas station to shoot the breeze with whoever was up there and wait for the boom and chaos that would ensue.  He would call me and tell me about the prank, howling with laughter.  After pulling this trick a couple of times over a 6 month period, he thought the locals were getting suspicious of him, I can’t imagine why.  So on my next visit; he gave the dynamite lighting duties to me so he could have an alibi.  I didn’t care if it was an hour fuse; I’ve never run so fast after lighting that mound of TNT.  Aubrey was always a kid at heart.

I tell you all of this and you might say, what a story, and a great story it is to be sure. But, what it doesn’t tell you about, other than the ambition, drive and intelligence of its protagonist, is the character of the man.  Despite all of the success Aubrey had in his life, his greatest achievements weren’t earned in the business world or won on the racetrack.  His greatest achievements were in the friendships he made, the peopled he mentored, the mother he was devoted to and the son he raised.  Aubrey was a loyal friend and he had many friends.  There wasn’t a weekend that we spent together where we didn’t spend at least some time on the phone calling friends and family, checking in, catching up, telling jokes.  Aubrey was a generous man as well, and most stories of his generosity will go untold, because he never told them.  As I was visiting with the supervisor of his building yesterday talking about my Dad, he told me that last Thanksgiving Aubrey rolled a shopping cart filled with turkeys into the lobby and started handing them to everyone who worked at the building.  I’ve heard stories like that about my Dad over the years, but never from him.  Aubrey had a lot of friends and for good reason, he was the most charming, sly, mischievous, fun loving and genuine man I have ever known. He appreciated the folly of life and the humor in it all and was able to draw a sharp light on that folly with one pithy hilarious quip.  He pulled no punches and sugar coated nothing, and somehow he still came across endearing, heartfelt and real.  My memories of our time spent with friends and family are filled with laughter and tomfoolery, cutting up and falling down, driving fast.  Every man wants the respect of his peers and the love of his friends and family and Aubrey earned both in spades.  He was beloved, he was legendary.  He told me once that when he died he wanted his funeral to be a celebration, which makes sense to me because Aubrey’s was a life worth celebrating.