Let me tell you about Miss Joni

Radiant. That’s the word I spent all night trying to find as I was thinking of the best way to describe my dear, sweet friend Joni Martin, who entered heaven’s realm Thursday night at 7:17 p.m. Our loss on earth is heaven’s gain. So, today, even though we are filled with sorrow we summon the strength to celebrate her life.

Let me tell you about my friend Miss Joni. She was radiant. You felt it when you were in her presence, you even felt it on the phone. All you had to do was hear her voice. There was something about Miss Joni that disarmed you. She could see right through you. When I was a 5th-grader I had a teacher like that. We used to say Miss Tillis had X-ray eyes because she could see through our troubles and knew exactly what to say. Miss Joni was like that. Whatever you had pent up inside had a way of dissipating the way steam rises. Troubles had a way of disappearing when Miss Joni was around.

Joni Martin. More than 60 years the wife of my close friend and colleague Buddy Martin. Buddy and I met at the Masters 50 years ago. I gave Buddy and Ray Holliman a ride back to their hotel in my MG on a stormy day in Augusta that postponed the third round of the tournament. The rain turned the red Georgia clay into this soggy, slick mush. My car sunk in the clay but the wheels kept spinning. Somewhere on the grounds of Augusta National my first gear gave up the ghost but somehow we made it to the highway. I must have made a decent impression because right there in that 1964 MG Ray offered me a job at Today in Cocoa making $40 more per week (big money in the 1970s) than I was making with the Savannah News-Press and I made a friend forever in Buddy.

It wasn’t until years later that I was introduced to the lovely Miss Joni. It took about two seconds for her to charm me. Maybe less than two seconds. The moment I met her I knew that Buddy had an absolute rock to hold onto.

Buddy and I were in the newspaper business when we met. I left before he did because there were things to do, places to go, people to meet all over the world, but in 1999 I went back to my writing roots on this thing called the internet. By that time, Buddy had done his things to do, places to go, people to meet all over the newspaper world. He won an Emmy Award producing a show for The NFL Today on CBS. St. Petersburg, New York, Denver and it seems everywhere in between Buddy was a star who won writing awards. He wrote books about famous people. Everywhere he went, Miss Joni was there, raising three rather remarkable kids and being anything and everything Buddy Martin needed.

There is that old saying that behind every successful man there is a strong woman. I wouldn’t say Miss Joni was ever behind Buddy except maybe to steady him in case he might fall. I choose to believe that 99 percent of the time she was beside him step for step. I think he would agree that he couldn’t have made it without her.

Buddy and the newspaper business were about to part ways in 2006 when we were in Scottsdale, Arizona as the Gators were about to crush Ohio State to win the national championship in Urban Meyer's second year as head coach. Buddy and I had built a rather solid friendship during Meyer’s first season as the Florida football coach. It seemed we were on the road constantly. We did pregame radio shows wherever and whenever the Gators played. We did an entire three hour show from his room at a Microtel, the only place in Lexington, Kentucky that had available rooms. We did a show from the lawn of the Bear Bryant Museum in Tuscaloosa. I can’t remember how much of the show was cut off when Vern Lundquist, a dear friend of Buddy and Miss Joni, somehow stepped on the power cord. Everywhere we did the show in 2005 and in 2006, Umatilla Steve was there. You could depend on him being there the way you can depend on the sun rising and setting every day.

As the friendship with Buddy grew stronger, so did my friendship with Miss Joni. To know Buddy was to know Miss Joni because they were inseparable. To know Miss Joni was to know what unconditional love is all about. When it came to Buddy, her kids and grandchildren, Miss Joni had this never empty reservoir of love. She was that way with the people she called friends, too. Somehow, I was fortunate enough that she allowed me to be her friend.

Unconditional love. We hear those words. Rarely do we have the chance to see words become action. Miss Joni was unique because within her heart there was this wellspring of love and thoughtful caring whose roots were in her unshakable faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus said the greatest commandment of all is to love God with all your heart, mind, body and soul. He said the second greatest commandment was to love one another. That is a perfect description of Miss Joni. She loved God. She loved people. She loved Buddy, her kids and grandkids. She loved Buddy’s friends and the people he worked with. She loved the circle of friends they built when Buddy departed the newspaper business for good and settled back in Ocala, his hometown.

And through the years, I can say she loved me. I could call Buddy and we would talk for an hour about sports or the state of the writing business. I would hear Miss Joni in the background and I would say hi. She dropped whatever she was doing to offer up this warm, sweet reply, the kind that could melt problems away.

Whenever I went to the Martin home in Ocala, I always looked at those photos of Miss Joni through the years. When she was young, oh my, but she never lost her beauty even as she aged. That’s radiance for you. I’ve told Buddy several times that he outkicked his coverage, not because he landed such a beautiful bride but because she had something deep inside that is indescribable. Radiance. That’s that word again. Writing about sports I often hear people talk about “it” factor. Whatever it is, Miss Joni had it in abundance.

Miss Joni’s “it” factor was her radiance. She warmed up a room. You couldn’t help but like her and even if you were at a low point, feeling completely and totally unlovable, Miss Joni could lift you up. The Bible tells us that God’s word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Well, Miss Joni’s radiance was a lamp and a light to the people she loved.

My friend Clark Whitten, my former pastor from when I lived in Altamonte Springs, speaks about God’s grace so eloquently. He simplifies it in such a way that even I can understand the marvelous power of grace. Grace enables us to be a light and a lamp. It enables us to see past the faults and flaws of others because God’s grace removes the stains and the clouds that would otherwise keep us from seeing the heart of those we encounter. That’s what grace is all about. Our heart when filled with God’s grace, sees past the obstacles and allows us to love others, even the unlovable.

Miss Joni had a heart filled with God’s good grace. She saw past all my faults and flaws and loved me just the same. I was her friend. I know I’m not the only friend she had – there were untold thousands I do believe – but Miss Joni had a way of making you feel that you were special, almost as if you were the only friend that mattered.

That is how I will choose to remember her. My dear, dear friend. I know that when she passed from this life into a radiant life in heaven, escorted into eternity by a band of angels, that she was greeted with these words: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I am also reminded of that verse in Hebrews where Paul writes, “Do not neglect to show kindness to strangers for in this way, without knowing it, have had angels as their guests.” I certainly am no angel, but somehow, I get the feeling that Miss Joni was either an angel or just that good and faithful servant who always had unseen angels by her side, helping her to see past all my faults and flaws. I was a stranger yet she took me in and befriended me.

And so, today I grieve because I am going to miss the friendship she gave so freely. Every time we ever spoke, Miss Joni’s last words to me were always, “Love you, Franz!” I know she didn’t speak those words casually. They came directly from her heart and were words spoken with real radiance.

There is that word again. Radiant. That was Miss Joni. I love you, too, Miss Joni.