| | Issue #19.09 :: 09/24/2007 - 09/30/2007 | Jay of all trades
You probably know him from his segment on NBC Augusta: “Where in Augusta is Jay Jefferies?” What you don’t know is that, in his real life, this energetic guru who works five jobs seems to be everywhere at once.
| BY ANGEL CLEARY
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AUGUSTA, GA - Jay Jefferies must have a twin. When I ask him he denies it. But there is no other way to explain how one man can hold down as many full-time gigs as he does. Most people would recognize the local celebrity from his spot as co-anchor for the NBC Augusta morning show. But he also hosts a WAKB Magic 96.9 FM radio show in the morning, which broadcasts simultaneously. And every day, he works for Paine College as director of public relations.
Churchgoers see him performing as lead drummer for five different gospel choirs at his church. And then, during evenings — often all night — he works as an embalmer at Mays Mortuary.
Somehow, the next morning, this tall, lanky man starts again before the rest of us wake up. Most of the time, he never goes to bed. Is one man really capable of working this much? Or is Jay Jefferies some kind of magician with a doppelganger?
To find out, I tried to follow him for a day.
Exposure
When I meet him at 8 a.m. at NBC Augusta, he tells me that already that morning he broadcast a live segment from the Family Y at 6 a.m., interviewing members who exercise there.
“Can you believe people get up at 5 a.m. to work out?” he asks incredulously. I look at him deadpan and wipe the sleep from my eyes. Last week he began his new schedule at NBC Augusta, co-anchoring morning news and broadcasting “Where in Augusta is Jay Jefferies?” live at 6 and 11 a.m. He used to work “just” as weekend meteorologist, but says he likes this new time slot better because he finally has his weekends off.
In between his news broadcasts, he drives over to Paine College and answers media requests, sends press releases and updates the Web site. Then he jaunts over to North Augusta to the Magic 96.9 station, pre-records or broadcasts the midday show live. Then he hauls ass back to NBC Augusta. If he receives a “dead call,” or message from Mays Mortuary to pick up a recently deceased person, he switches gears and drives the company hearse.
Despite his punishing, and sometimes bizarre, schedule he says he’s happy because now he is doing everything he ever dreamed of as a kid playing games with his neighborhood buddies in Cleveland, Ohio.
“We’d wait till someone bought a refrigerator or a washing machine and build a plane out of the cardboard box,” he reminisces. “When we grew up, two of my best friends became pilots and one became a flight attendant.” He wanted to be a pilot, too. Meteorology fulfilled that desire.
“Even though I’m not up there in the sky,” he says, “I am forecasting it from the ground.”
It was why he came to Augusta years ago, to work for Channel 12 as a meteorologist.
More importantly, it’s where he met his wife of 12 years, Bonita Jenkins.
Family time
“She didn’t like me at first,” he smirks. “I had to convince her to go out with me.” He used the same magic, the charisma that makes people actually care “where in Augusta” he is, to win her over. Now they have two children; a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old.
Wait a minute. All those jobs, and he has kids?
“It can be difficult making sure we have them taken care of,” says Bonita, who also works a full-time job as public relations director of Piedmont College, “but we have really great friends who help us out. We couldn’t do it without them.”
She says their chaotic schedules work because Jay is easygoing.
“Bonita likes to joke with me and say I wouldn’t even get excited if the house burned down,” he laughs. She says she also understands the adrenaline high of being in the news media. After all, she met Jay when she too was working at Channel 12. Soon after they married, he spent two years hopping red-eye coast-to-coast flights as a meteorologist with MSNBC on location all around the world.
“I decided to stay here in Augusta,” he says, because his wife was expecting their first child. He jokes, “I don’t know how we did that.”
Just call it immaculate conception, because Bonita is definitely a saint.
“We’re both clowns and always joking,” she says. “And as long as the kids are happy it will work.”
She says she likes his media persona because it’s genuine, even if it is a larger-than-life version of the normally humble and soft-spoken Jay.
“Everywhere we go, people recognize him,” she says. His children even call him by his TV personality.
“When you ask my son what my name is he says, ‘Mommy.’ And he calls his sister, ‘Sissy.’ But when you ask him what his daddy’s name is, he says, ‘Jay Jefferies.’”
Dual personality
We drive in his black Corolla to job No. 2, his radio gig. This small, urban-friendly car, understated but slick, suits his off-air personality. But if his off-air persona is a compact vehicle, then his on-air personality would be a high-performance sports car.
“Now I have to get in the groove,” he says when he gets in the studio. He presses record. Suddenly his even, steady voice more suited for NPR becomes dynamic, even momentous, and he booms into the microphone:
“Magic 96.9, that’s Stevie Wonder. Hey, what’s going on? This is Jay in for the wild man…” He stops, sighs and in a soothing voice complains, “This is no good. Oh man, we are on the wrong day. All that wasted energy gone.”
Here, the contrast between on-Jay and off-Jay is most apparent. The Jay the public sees is a hyperbolic version of himself. He explains his radio job is the most recent addendum to his collection of jobs. It all started earlier this year, after James Brown died. His daughter Dana Brown asked Jay to cover for her radio spot. Why not? He’s been doing radio since he was 15. Thus, he’s been hosting the show since January.
“Everyone says I must have taken time-management classes,” Jay says with a wide grin. “I’m really just lucky because all my jobs are within 10 minutes of each other.” How many people are lucky enough to find such diverse employers within minutes of the other?
Amazingly, the 40-something year-old claims he doesn’t use an alarm clock or a calendar. If he were a superhero, his power would be the ability to stop time. Instead of exposure to Kryptonite, his weakness would be the disappearance of his hand-held.
“I work with close to 30 different computers every day,” he says as he deftly adjusts volume levels and manipulates what seem like 30 random buttons. “They all have different software, different running systems, different servers and different passwords. I really don’t know how I remember it all.”
Normally he broadcasts the show live, he says, but on days like today he’ll pre-record the cut-ins.
He clicks record again and the energy in the room surges toward him like a vortex.
“Magic 96.9, good morning this is Jay Jefferies, in for the wild man, Ron Thomas…” and on he continues till he has recorded all 16 music breaks in 10 minutes.
Doing his own thing
We leave the radio station to visit where he undertakes his most peculiar and curious occupation — as a mortician at W.H. Mays Mortuary Funeral Home. He tells me if he gets a “dead call” I can go with him to pick up the body. Uh, thanks, but no thanks. As curious as I am, I am relieved he doesn’t get any.
At the funeral home, before I can see the viewing room, he has to move a body that is waiting on a preparation bed. Of all his job titles, this one is the most unusual to me. He tells me how he became interested in it and the story is even stranger.
About eight years ago, Bonita’s father died. She was seven months pregnant. At the time, Jay had never before been involved in funeral services, but wanting to protect his physically vulnerable wife, he took over the organization of the funeral. He even helped prepare her father’s body by dressing it for the casket. He says the process came as second nature to him.
“The funeral director that was there said, ‘Man, you worked this too good. You ought to think about doing it for a profession.’” he says. “I was like, ‘No way.’” Bonita’s extended family owns a couple of funeral homes and she encouraged him. Two years later, he went to Ogeechee Technical College and got certified in mortuary science. Jay liked it so much, he now works two or three times a week embalming. He helped prepare local Ryan Clark after the Virginia Tech shootings. He can’t say whether he participated in the preparation of James Brown, but he admits he was an integral part of the funeral.
In fact, if working in the media wasn’t so addicting, he says he would probably start his own funeral home tomorrow.
“I don’t know what I’d call it,” he says. “It will take money and I want to do it right, find the right location, buy the right equipment, find the right combination of buildings.”
When he does open his own business, he wants to expand funerary services to people of all ethnicities.
“Death doesn’t have a color, so I’d like to be able to also do services for everyone,” he says. Bonita agrees.
“Jay wants to know how to embalm black people as well as white,” she says, “and there are different ways to prepare the body for both.” She explains that funeral homes and directors often service people within their personal network of friends and family.
“We are friends with all types of people,” she says. As queasy as considering the idea he would embalm friends and family members, it often happens to Jay.
“Now that people know I do this, I’m the first person they call when someone in they’re family dies,” he says. Death is when a person feels most helpless. Who better than someone you trust to take care of your family? It’s Jay’s ability to connect on personal level that makes people like his persona in the media, and as an embalmer.
The man who never sleeps
Just about the only down time Jay has is the 15 minutes in his car on the way to his next gig. What he needs is a vacation.
“I had a vacation. In fact, I’ve tried to take vacations twice; but every time, I get called back,” he says, resigned to the fate of a man in demand. When he’s ready to retire, he says not a soul will be able to coax him back into the media. He’ll leave behind his leash (aka cell phone) and take no messages.
“When I disappear, nobody will be able to find me. Not even my mother.”
Still, he loves the media. He admits he can’t quit. It’s not that he’s a workaholic. He cherishes time spent with his family. It’s just that his brain never rests. Not even for slumber.
“I can’t sleep more than four hours. If I do that I’m tired,” he says. “I just shut down and I’m no good for that day.”
So there it is. His secret to success. He’s not a magician. He doesn’t have an evil twin. He’s really just an insomniac. Inventor Thomas Edison was an insomniac. And Alexander the Great and Napoleon probably would have been a lot more peaceful if they could have gotten some shut eye.
Jay isn’t out to conquer the world, maybe just Augusta news media. One thing is for certain. His life couldn’t get any busier. So next time you watch NBC Augusta and you try to guess, “Where in Augusta is Jay Jefferies?” — just call in with the teasing response his wife gave: “He isn’t at home.” | |
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