Memories of a Great Guy!

Some of you knew Mark his whole life, and others didn’t know him at all except through what I have shared. Mark would have died one year ago last night. He died on the same day as my mother. The hard part of today is, this is the day he lay on his floor waiting for his body to be discovered.

I thought I would write today about the Mark I knew.

Mark Patrick Arnold was born March 20,1977 at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina MN,  a suburb of Minneapolis. We gave him the name Mark because we liked it. Patrick came from his mother’s Irish roots, and she was hoping he would be born on St. Patrick’ Day. Those Irish!

As a young boy, we moved several times because of my work. We moved to Chicago, Fort Wayne,IN,Yorba Linda,CA and then back to Minneapolis. Or, as Mark would post on his Facebook page when announcing his travel schedule  MSP-ORD-FWA-SNA-MSP. Mark was thirteen when we moved back to Minneapolis (Eden Prairie).

He was not a great student. Not that he wasn’t smart, but he was always having too much fun with his new found pals and friends for life. He mostly worked retail as a teenager. Walmart was where he worked the longest. He and his lifelong buddy, Mark Kiefer, worked together. One time it was pretty slow and the manager ask the Marks to keep busy and perhaps build an aisle display. When the manager returned to check on them, they had built a large Maxipads display. That was so Mark and Mark.

One of his early avocations was WWII airplanes. he read, he studied and built models. He became active as a volunteer at a very large WWII aircraft museum in Eden Prairie. He became a docent at fourteen, conducting tours. He loved giving his mini lectures. This was the foundation of his true talent of sales, teaching and performing. Everything in his life prepared him for his ultimate career with LG Electronics.

He attended the School of Communication Arts, where he received an AA degree. Unfortunately, he discovered that he really wasn't very talented at computer animation. His mother and I agreed that when we looked at the other student’s projects. But that was okay because it set him on a career path in consumer electronics.

He got a job selling big screen TVs on commission. That’s a tough way to make a living. When he started in sales he bought and studied many books on salesmanship. He studied and understood the sales process. I have been in store when he was talking to a prospective customer. Being in sales and marketing myself, I understood his talent as a salesperson.

He moved on, working at Best Buy and an Apple store. When he lost his job at Apple, he went into a deep depression. His mother and I were very worried about him, but he finally pulled himself up and used his growing network of associates in the business to get a job at AT&T wireless.

What I have always found interesting is that from his early days in consumer electronics, he knew he wanted to work for a manufacturer as a trainer. That would be a very tough job to find, having never worked for a manufacturer. But once again, his network let him know about a trainer job at LG Electronics.  Mark wanted that job so bad that, he tried to keep his expectations down to avoid severe disappointment. He got the job. I was so happy for him. It turned out he didn't have as much to worry about as he thought. I learned later that the HR representative that did his telephone interview told the boss, “This one is special, I strongly recommend you hire him”. And that began his career journey. with LG. When he started there were forty-two trainers. Then the company decided to cut back to eight trainers and go with relying on an outside firm to handle the stores. Mark was not sure what was going to happen,especially since his immediate bosses would be taking two of the slots. He started to put out feelers in case he lost his job. Living in Minneapolis turned out to be a plus for him because that is the world headquarters of Best Buy. He became the key LG guy for the Best Buy stores nationally. It was heavy travel job, but he loved it. Hotel points and airline points became a hobby. He very much wanted to use them to go to London. He said one time that the had enough and that it looked like it was going to happen. It never did.

He received two promotions and there was pressure on him to move to the New Jersey headquarters of LG to be the head in store training guy for appliances. He agonized over moving to New Jersey. He was a Minneapolis boy and loved being a Minnesotan. My advice was make the move because it meant furthering his career, and I knew the importance of being at headquarters. He took the job in New Jersey in June, 2012 and found an apartment in Hackensack.

That was his career path, but it was the other stuff that made Mark who he was. He was a young man who took on a number of avocations. He would passionately pursue a new found interest, then would tire of it and move on to the next.

As mentioned before, his first was WWII airplanes.

He did some Karate,but after about a year , he gave it  up and moved on. He was always a movie and music buff and knew a lot about them He was a big Star Wars guy, his favorite movies among many favorites were Reservoir Dogs, Batman and Glen Gary, Glen Ross. ( He would also see Glen Gary on the Broadway stage.) It was his custom  to see the big movie premiers at the first midnight showing. a fact that one of his friends at least now he didn't have to go to a movie in the middle of the night.

In a post on one friend’s Facebook after Mark passed away, was how much he missed their Oscar marathon to see the nominees.

Mark  was a first class Trivia player. Every Monday he and some of his pals would go to a NordEast bar. they won all the time. However, the prize was always paid off in beer. I don't think he ever bought a beer there. He liked swing dancing, poker, Lee’s Liquor Lounge and Nye’s Polonaise Room.

His favorite sport was baseball. He never cared much for football and basketball. He played Little League in California, but of course he had the Arnold sports curse. He wasn't very good. As a kid he was a die hard Cub fan. We saw the Cubs at Wrigley and Dodger Stadium. later he would become  a Twins fan. One of our greatest memories was seeing the sixth game of the 1991  World Series, where Kirby Puckett hit the game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth  One of the greatest World Series games of all time. When I was in Minneapolis a couple of summers ago he took me to a Twins game at the new Target Field. We had great seats. It would be one of the last things we did together.

However, his last passion was perhaps his greatest exhibition of talent, photography. He fell in love with Manhattan and was in to the city every weekend with his camera. He left a legacy of beautiful street and model photography. I will treasure his pictures forever. On the night he died the last thing he posted was a picture of a model he had photographed that weekend.

He put together a video NYC 2012 which he put on You Tube. He documented his experience of surviving Hurricane Sandy. He won an expensive Canon camera in a random drawing on a photo web sight. I have a recording of that call from his FB. I cant listen to it yet. Photography was truly his calling. I honestly believe he might have eventually made a new career for himself.

Perhaps the capper to his life was when he appeared on Celebrity Apprentice. LG sponsored one on the contests between two teams of Celebrities. He trained the celebrities on LG appliances. On his team was Marylu Henner. Unfortunately, I never got to discuss his experiences with him. They had a non-disclosure contract which prohibited discussion until after the airing.They shot the show in November,  and it didn't air until April 20, a month after his death . you can watch it in You Tube. But I can't bring myself to watch it again.

Mark had a great sense of humor, loved trying new things, loved his job, and loved traveling. Most of all he loved his friends and his friends loved him.

So that’s my Markie. There was so much passion in what ever he did, and so much more I could say. On this anniversary of his passing, I love telling some of his story. There is so much more to say about this really good guy.

I always loved the way he answered my calls, “Hey, what’s happening?" I can hear it in my head everyday. Oh how I miss him.

Bless you all.

Sam