Tributes from those who love Angus
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Angus was spontaneous and always in motion.
Angus’s MO was climbing rocks and trees, jumping on his trampoline, doing gymnastics flips, parkour, spring board and platform diving, or walking on his slack line.
Angus’s mind was as agile as his body. His physical prowess reflected his supple and nimble mind—always leaping and diving towards big ideas. Only 22 years old, he was well on his way to making substantive contributions to environmental and social justice issues. Opening his own internet business in 2014, Angus was in the process of building a web presence that promoted emerging entrepreneurs in the areas of sustainability, mental and physical health, and learning.
Among others, startups he supported included a massage therapy practice, a job assistance center to help US veterans, and an experiential learning program.
Angus Britton Emmett Moloney was born on Friday, August 13th, 1993, in Salida, Colorado. His love of nature and his creative work-around approach to life were built on life with his family in Colorado, living in the mountains above 10,000 feet, where he could look up at the night sky and see the Milky Way.
Angus passed away on Saturday, September 26th, 2015, as a result of injuries sustained in a fall when hiking in Gregory Canyon in Boulder, Colorado.
Though he was an avid rock climber, his death was not the result of a radical free solo attempt, equipment failure, or falling rock but rather a missed foot placement while scrambling a few feet from the beaten Saddle Rock Trail. Rock & Ice Magazine wrote a piece about Angus just a week and a half later.
In contrast to Angus’s physical perpetual motion, he had a profoundly calm and centered spirit, connected to his purpose. He was determined to change the world, to make it a better place, and to energize people with fresh and positive ideas.
Angus was insatiably curious and passionate about making and eating vegan food, physical health and mind-body connections, energy fields and quantum physics, renewable and free energy sources, the human brain, and consciousness.
Angus could see the goodness in all around him. His infectious smile brightened every room and lifted the spirits of all those he met. It is hard to imagine a happier, more sincere, loving, eager, and optimistic young man. Many have learned from him and been impacted greatly by his bright and shining life.
Reflections on being the parents of Angus…
On Children
by Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Keeping up with Angus:
• Swimming and diving
• Golfing (sometimes barefoot)
• Bowling - he modeled his style after Norton from The Honeymooners!
• Being a general daredevil
• Drumming
• Rhythm and dancing - from tap to break dancing!
• Making music - playing piano and keyboard (self taught - using his computer to learn) and didgeridoo
• “Spider man” - scaling walls in the house; climbing trees; climbing rocks; jumping (trampoline and slackline)
"Life hacking" - insatiable desire to learn new things - in a DIY way (YouTube videos and audio books; Khan Academy; MIT MOOCs; always sharing movies and books)
Full of surprises! New ideas; new theories (free energy; growing a hydroponic garden in the kitchen); new lessons (knife throwing)
Needed to express himself artistically, and this was continually evolving and changing; Angus was a guy of many “looks”...
Our Family
Reading out loud together (The Little Prince; Mystery on the Docks; Is your mama a llama?; Harry Potter; Mark Twain)
Traveling together - Colorado (Valley View Hot Springs, all the parks); Moloney family reunions; NASA Ames, Kennedy Space Center; North Carolina (Ocracoke and Pilot Mountain); Belize (Caye Caulker)
Cooking and eating together - FOOD such an important part of our life and times (making pickles, salads, grilling, fruit (every type but especially bananas and clementines)
Creating and experimenting - “mad scientist” (Hydrogen fuel cell; tube with natural gas and holes and music)
Angus was 1/4 of the whole
Animal lover ([email protected] - 1st email address!) (goldfish with Jesse from Center Street; hamsters; birds; Opie (Angus and Opie were inseparable - got him as a 6 week old pup and the two did everything together… until ~2013, when there was a disruption in the force and a girl knocked him down a notch!)
Always questioning things - what is money? What is a corporation and should a corporation have rights? Why is the sky blue? Does walking in a bamboo forest give you the perspective of an ant in grass?
Conversations and discussions—loved to engage with others; even tempered and loving (liked to share and talk about movies and such - Through the Wormhole; Happy; I Am)
Explorer and adventurer
Solving puzzles (Washington Post “I spy” Sunday magazine); jigsaw
Determined to master speed reading and couldn’t read enough. Though not considered a “reader” when younger, as a 20-something adult, he was never without a book!
Determined to master speed reading and couldn’t read enough. Though not considered a “reader” when younger, as a 20-something adult, he was never without a book!
Comedy and jokes - Old school: Marx Brothers; Jackie Gleason (Honeymooners); Mike Meyers (So I Married An Axe Murderer); Monty Python; Eddie Izzard; Pink Panther; prankster (playing hide and seek or doing random “trust falls”)
Eye exercises - Determined he’d never need glasses
Good with tools and gadgets (beading loom; welding torch; engraving tool; computer)
LOVE of water - swimming/diving; ocean or lakes
LOVE of stars and the cosmos and space
Eclectic interest and talent - renaissance man
Artist - beading; “knotting” hemp bracelets and necklaces; spray-paint art; engraving; clay; pottery; Adobe Illustrator and graphic design
Playing games - Connect 4; checkers; Pictionary; chess; Scattergories; Risk; Scrabble; Jenga and always full of hugs and smiles
Friends of all shapes and sizes and outlooks and energies
Confident around others - and not shy. Always ready to smile and defuse a situation
Entertaining to watch and observe the things he did and all he became...
Dysfunctional? So many interests -- “need to narrow” -- but why? Angus was an opinionated but not defyant son
There were a few predictable things about life with angus - he was predictably a teenage slob 😉
But most things were NOT. His interests were always morphing and expanding—always moving outward, like the Big Bang! His universe was constantly expanding…
Unpredictably, he was very responsible - not in trouble with the law (he heard Jean’s story about Hot Sulphur Springs one too many times); not hanging with the “wrong” crowd; not abusing drugs/alcohol
How fortunate are we to have watched angus blossom and grow and thrive! We are grateful for his energy and love, we’re grateful for his smile and laugh and movement!
How amazing it’s been to have him as part of our lives.
And absolutely in love with life… and Camille!
I’m Alta Britton Allen, Angus Moloney’s grandmother. I was and always will be his Granny Alta. Angus is the son of my daughter Jeannie and son-in-law Jim.
I want to share some memories of Angus that will help others know the special relationship that he and I had.
When he was interested and when something was relevant to him, Angus had the patience to sit with a project “forever.”
Once I took Angus fishing. While we waited for the fish to bite or not, Angus declared, “I’m learning patience, Granny Alta.”
He had patience with so many things.
Angus’s patience was also evident in the way he worked with me to help me build a website for my educational consulting work and to learn to use my Apple computer and phone. The photo above is Angus at my house (July 2014) working on a website project.
Angus took a non-conventional approach for learning anything he set his mind to learn. And once he learned what he needed to know, he was always ready to share that knowledge with anyone else who needed it.
As a young boy, Angus had the notion of “forever.” The intention behind his instructions to me to keep something forever carried a deep, mature understanding of “forever” well beyond his years.
He’d spend hours using his loom to make beaded bracelets or using his compressor-driven tool to create detailed engravings. He was always thinking of ways to turn his talent for making things into business ventures.
I was lucky to be one of the few who got one of his hand-carved boxes.
Angus was always an inventor and explorer. He had adventure in his blood and was always ready to learn or to try something new.
And Angus was clever. He was an inventor! Once he took me into his kitchen (the “lab”) to introduce me to “InstaMorph”, a moldable plastic compound he used to create any number of things. And he spontaneously took the time to make me an InstaMorph fleur de lis (pictured above).
Angus, when I met you in my senior year of high school, at that tiny Local Market grocery store down the street from my house, and when you introduced yourself to me with that grand smile, I knew something big was about to happen. Our hikes, our late nights making gigantic salads and watching stand-up, our endless conversations about conspiracy theories and spirituality and everything in between, our construction projects for the apartment that didn't usually last very long, our spontaneous water fights or chases around the park, that time we tried to put the cat in the snow, our ongoing Internet discoveries—all these memories are only mine to keep now. I think about you so much still; you were my first love and I was yours. You made me laugh and you made me think. Thank you for being my everything for those two long years.
Some of my favorite photos I've taken of Angus. His beautiful profile and long and lean body made for the perfect subject.
Our freezing cold camping trip on New Year's Eve.
A literal 6-foot tall snowman we made on Valentine's Day.
I take a local overnight train twelve hours from Delhi to Varnasi seeking solace from grief in the mythos of the sacred Ganges. For two days I stay sheltered in a small room with a view of the ghats where Hindu priests trailing white garments burn bodies to ash on the fetid banks. I spend time remembering those who have so recently passed: Angus, Dad, Vusi. On the third day, I am called to the river.
I seek to transform loss through the Spiritual Alchemy of creating digital stories to express my love. ln the story luminescence dedicated to Angus, my unedited images photographed at dawn are juxtaposed with a closely edited text to evoke meaning out of a simple human act of remembrance.
“OMG, angus, this can’t be real.
You can’t leave me to figure this out!
You’re my partner, and we’ve just started business together!
What am I supposed to do??”
Let’s just say I was a little apprehensive at first...
But you know what, buddy, we’re doing it!
Thanks for your vision. Thanks for your guidance.
It started in April 2014—at the table in the Van Buren Street house, Falls Church, VA.
We began with excitement and a sense of the American dream of building a family business together.
• You watched and listened and helped me with my web business naivete.
• You took my dream and helped me search for my why.
• You took my why and helped me turn it into the what and how of services to offer my prospective clients.
You were gonna build my new consulting business (Visual Teaching Technologies) a website, and then magic would happen, wouldn’t it?
...and just at the point of ‘launch,’ you left me. What?
Really?
Well, actually, you and I know that I was a bit freaked out by you leaving Virginia and heading to Canada to be with Camille.
But you assured me that with technology, you would still be working with me.
I needed to trust that even though you and I wouldn’t be physically at the table together, you’d be there. And together, we would be able to work on the website and to improve and market VTT. And we did!
We spent hours and hours on calls and Skype working with WordPress edits. (ha ha - I so remember when you took away my admin access to VTT because I’d massively screwed up one of the pages!)
“OK, I’m updating now. Refresh your page.”
You were so patient and so driven to help me. And though I couldn’t reach out and touch you or look straight into those blue blue eyes for reassurance, I knew you were there. Indeed, you were there.
You created ABEM Digital Creations during the winter and spring of 2015, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada - with Camille.
You named and began branding ABEM, and you needed some money to get started so that you could develop and grow.
You were so frustrated by the money! It was a catch 22—in the most maddening way—needing to demonstrate success in order to get funds, needing funds to be able to get to success.
I remember how excited we all were in July 2015. July—2 months and change before your fall.
You and I worked together to incorporate ABEM Digital Creations as an LLC in North Carolina.
You and Jim and I went to BB&T, and we got our funds together to set you up with your 1st business loan (from us, not from BB&T, right?!)
• You introduced me to Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels 10 days before your fall. “We need funnels, mom. We’re gonna to be among the first. It’s gonna be huge!”
• You introduced me to Dan Kennedy and Perry Marshall and Hal Elrod and Tim Ferriss.
• You taught me about Joe Dispenza and string theory and quantum physics. Everything is interconnected, and really it’s fundamentally all energy and empty space!
• You taught me that determination and resilience in work can be achieved with smiles and laughs and positive mental attitude.
• You taught me to trust that whether you are physically working with me or not, you are here with me.
Some critical lessons learned:
1) Don't say no for other people.
2) A good website is never ‘finished.’ Websites are dynamic!
3) Take a DIY approach and use the internet to learn all you can about the technology and techniques for digital marketing.
4) Vague contract expectations bring confusion and a "pheonix" result (Angus knows). Work to prevent scope creep and never-ending projects.
5) Being in business for yourself requires taking risks, trusting yourself, and running with imperfection vs being stuck until everything is perfect.
6) Get to a place of understanding with clients. Show care, empathy, and compassion.
7) Trust is built over time but can be lost in seconds.
The ABEM loan from Jean & Jim got you set up in the Montreal cowork environment. You were thriving!
The sales/marketing lessons you taught me are as good or better than any I’ve learned from the industry gurus.
You knew you were on the way to becoming the next Tim Ferriss 😉
You were an entrepreneur—defining your own destiny, creating your own luck, building your own empire, and changing the world.