Why LastMessages exists

Hank Jacoby and I were close friends in high school. We lost touch not long after, until social media brought us back together in the mid-2000s and we picked up our old friendship. In February 2015 he sent me this:

“Well you've done right by me before; more than you can ever know. I'll tell you about it when I can look you in the eyes so you know the full weight of my appreciation. I'll always be in your debt.”

We talked often after that, but we lived far apart, and the get-together he wanted kept waiting. One evening in April he walked me through his plans for his town. He died in his sleep that night, at home in Salem, Indiana. He was 52. I never got to hear what he wanted to tell me.

A month after his funeral, I was thinking about everything I wanted my 16-year-old son to know, the things teenage sons don't always want to hear. I remembered My Life, the Michael Keaton film about a man recording what he wants his unborn son to know. The whole idea for LastMessages arrived at once.

In October 2016, my college friend Ann Jackman Hynes signed up to test the first version. A few days later she wrote to me:

“My disease has progressed to hell and I was wondering if you could create a condensed version of what you were planning, quickly. I sadly, do not have a lot of time.”

It wasn't ready. Ann died on January 31, 2017. She was 52.

LastMessages is built so that no one else runs out of time waiting for it.

Skip Middleton
Founder, LastMessages

“Life is for exploring, playing, and enjoying the ones you love.”

Hank Jacoby