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Five years ago on April 19th, 2021, the phone rang . . . And even now, I can tell you exactly what the air felt like in that moment . . . Connie Ash, Executive Assistant for Jo Frigger, the Chairman of EMO Trans Trans Global Logistics was on the other end of the line, and she said words that didn’t seem possible: “our great friend, “Jo” Frigger, is gone.”
You know how there are moments that don’t just change your day, they change the shape of time? After Connie spoke, it was like the world hit a hard stop. Sound still existed. People still moved around. But inside, everything froze. And here we are again, five years later and I’m still carrying him with me.
I keep coming back to the simplest truth: we had time together, and it was good time. Not perfect, not staged, not for show. Just real, well-lived life. I think about the four of us, Sabiha, Karin, Jo and I, gathered for my son Geoffrey’s wedding. I think about grandchildren’s birthday parties where the joy wasn’t complicated. And I think about all those places around the world we “visited” because of the EMO Trans Global meetings, where work and travel and friendship braided together so tightly you couldn’t always tell where one ended and the other began.
And then there were the late nightcaps. Those little after-hours moments where sometimes we barely even talked. Not because there was nothing to say, but because there was nothing we needed to prove. Isn’t that one of the rarest comforts? Being with someone and not having to fill the room with words.
Jo was in my life for 50 years. Yes, we were business partners, in a way, absolutely. But if I’m honest, that’s not the headline. The headline is that Jo was my friend. The kind of friend where you could go quiet for two months, or six months, or even just a week, and then you’d see each other and it would be seamless. The conversation would pick up right where it left off. And before you knew it, you were laughing again.
There are friendships that feel like work. Negotiations. Keeping score. Watching your step. That was never us. We never had a cross word. Not once. Part of that was luck, sure, but part of it was Jo. He simply wouldn’t let the temperature rise. No matter what was happening, no matter how dramatic the moment could get, he had this calm authority that kept everything from spilling over.
Jo had perspective. Long vision. A reasoned approach. If you dropped him into a chaotic situation with no warmup, no warning, he didn’t flail. He didn’t need a committee meeting. He just knew what to do. And I’ll tell you, that’s rare. I’ve known maybe one other person in my entire life with that same uncanny steadiness, and that’s another story for another day. But Jo had it. That “Cool Hand Luke” quality, right there in real life.
I miss him so much that even now, when I try to explain it, my words feel too small. And the older I get, the more I realize that what I’m grieving isn’t only a person. I’m grieving a form of friendship that’s hard to replace once it’s gone.
 I’ve been thinking a lot about male friendship, specifically. Not the loud, performative kind. Not the “we should get together sometime” kind. I mean the pure version: showing up, being there, letting the dialogue wander wherever it wanders, and knowing you’re safe in the presence of someone who respects you and sees you.
There’s a line from journalist Ezra Klein that’s been ringing in my ears: men tend to have fewer friends than women, and as men age, their circle often shrinks more and more. Some men end up with none at all, and that loneliness becomes a serious health risk.
When I heard that, I almost laughed through the ache, because it made me think: who knew Jo was good for your health? The funny part is, the health factor never came up. There was no invoice, no bill at the end of the night. There was just the steady gift of him being himself.
And if you knew Jo, you know another truth: his humor could cut through heaviness like a knife. That wry timing. That double meaning delivered with a straight face. It was effortless for him. You’d be mid-conversation, all serious, and he’d drop a line that would make you pause for half a second and then burst out laughing because you realized what he’d just done.
Sometimes when someone dies, people try to comfort you with the idea that the person is at peace, that they’re telling you from somewhere above, “It’s all right.” And I can almost hear Jo saying that. Like he’s checking in, calm as ever, reassuring as ever.
But here’s the honest reply, Jo: it’s not all right. We miss you. We miss you badly. And I wonder sometimes, in the way you wonder when you’ve lost someone you love, can you hear what your colleagues wrote? Can you hear what your friends still say when your name comes up? Do you know how present you still are in the rooms you used to fill?
There’s a passage from Walt Whitman that keeps circling back when I think about Jo. Whitman talks about departing like air, about becoming part of the world again, about being found under your boot-soles, in the grass, in the very ordinary places. And then that promise: if you can’t find me in one place, keep encouraged. Look somewhere else. I’m waiting for you.
That’s what it feels like now. Missing Jo in one place, I search another. In a story shared over dinner. In a memory that comes out of nowhere. In the way someone handles a tough moment with calm. In a laugh that sounds just a little like his.
Jo was a natural leader. He carried that quality with him wherever he went, and it didn’t matter if he was in a boardroom or somewhere quiet and pastoral back home in Germany. It’s worth pausing on the fact that he entered this world in 1940, a time when history was anything but gentle. And yet what people remember about him isn’t hardness. It’s steadiness. It’s decency. It’s the sense that he could build something solid and keep it human.
I think about one particular gathering, October 17th, 2021, in a restaurant near the water in Freeport, Long Island. A big group came together for what would have been Jo’s eighty-first birthday. And something happened that night that I’ll never forget: as one, hearts lifted. Not because the loss was gone, but because the love was undeniable. We celebrated Jo. We devoted our attention to him. We sent the message as best we could: rest in peace, and rest in comfort, surrounded by the mercy and the love you earned.
At one point, my son Ralph and I had managed to capture Jo on video for a few minutes. Just a short clip, nothing dramatic. But here’s the thing about video: you can talk for hours describing somebody’s presence, and then a brief recording does what words can’t. It lays the person right out there, clear as day.
Watching it now, in 2026, it’s strange and comforting at the same time. The clip is alive with good feeling and hope. It’s bittersweet, but it’s also a reminder: he was real. He was here. And we got to know him.
And the work he built keeps moving since 1972. EMO Trans continues its journey here in 2026 as a vibrant, growing company. With Karin Frigger as Chairwoman and a global reach, it’s still delivering that rare combination: personal service with real multinational strength.
When you tell that story, when you look at what EMO Trans has become, you can’t miss the imprint of the builder and the dreamer. An unassuming man who helped shape a company, and in doing that, reflected what’s best in the logistics world: the quiet competence, the relationships, the trust that gets earned, shipment by shipment, year by year.
Now let me take you somewhere else, because memory works like that. It jumps tracks. It pulls you through doors you didn’t plan to open.
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There’s this photograph above that I can’t stop returning to: the Arends and the Friggers together in Manhattan, at the Four Seasons Restaurant on East 52nd Street. Geoffrey and Sabiha, Jo and Karin. And me, holding that moment the way you hold a match in the dark.
The Four Seasons wasn’t just a restaurant. It was a world. Designed by Philip Johnson and Meis van der Rohe, it was the kind of place that defined an era, a landmark of modern design from the 1950s. When it opened back in 1959, people talked about the elegance, the spectacle of it. And later it became an interior landmark, which tells you something about how much it meant to the city.
It even rewired the restaurant business in New York. The Grill Room became famous for the power lunch, that was invented there as the weekday pageant of influence and ambition. We weren’t there for that theater, not really. Our memories are softer than that. Ours are about time together, about laughter, about the strange magic of being tucked away from the hustle outside.
I remember going there for Sabiha’s cooking classes, of all things, learning to prepare signature dishes like Dover Sole, the crispy duck and other specialties. And after the cooking, you’d sit in a room full of couples on a relaxed Saturday afternoon, eating what you’d made, lingering for hours. The usual business gorillas were gone. In their place were husbands and wives and partners laughing, enjoying giant servings of cotton candy for dessert, like kids who got away with something.
And then, in one of those strange alignments that feels almost symbolic, The Four Seasons closed, went out of business. One day it was there, carrying all that history and elegance, and the next day it was gone.
I can’t help imagining in a brief moment, that Jo figured out how to bring the spirit of that place with him to the other side. Because that’s what he did, wasn’t it? He took the best of things, the heart of things, and made sure they didn’t get lost.
Once upon a time, we sat inside those elegant rooms, a world away from the frantic charge of the city. We laughed until we almost choked. We took a picture in front of the Picasso tapestry, the only Picasso publicly displayed in a restaurant at the time, and the space itself felt like it was participating in the moment. Even the metal blinds on those floor-to-ceiling windows felt like part of the music.
That song ended, of course. Today, the melody lingers. The space is still lovely, even as it’s been reshaped. The Grill exists in a new form, the Pool Room sits mostly empty except for events, and the Picasso is no longer there, now kept in a museum. But when I went back, even in the new version of that old swank, it felt like the room winked at us, as if to say, you were here, and it mattered.
A waiter cut a thick slice of prime rib, and alongside the meat and potatoes came a big, bone-in slice of steak. He told us the best way to enjoy it was the simplest way: pick it up and eat it with your hands. And somehow, that small detail felt like Jo, too. Practical. Unpretentious. A little rebellious in the most charming way.
Maybe that’s what remains when someone like Jo is gone. Not just the big accomplishments, not just the company milestones, not just the formal tributes. What remains is character. A way of moving through the world. A steadiness that you start to recognize in yourself, years later, when you’re in a hard moment and you hear an inner voice asking, calmly, what’s the right thing to do next?
So yes, we search another place. We say his name. We tell the stories. We watch the short videos that somehow contain a whole person. We keep alive the kind of friendship that made us better and healthier, even if we didn’t know it at the time.
Thanks for the memories, Jo. You live in my heart, and you don’t die there. Goodnight, my friend, wherever you are.
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Vol. 25 No. 18
Vol. 25 No. 19
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