My Father's Four Years of Passionate and Earnest Love Letters — to Jamba Juice

After 40+ years as a play-it-straight insurance lawyer, my secretly witty dad finally found his ideal creative outlet in the land of Super Antioxidant Smoothies. (I’m not so sure the Jamba Juice CEO agrees.)

Illustration by Tim Peacock

After more than four decades working as a lawyer for an insurance company, my father formally retired. Informally, he continued to work. He took freelance assignments. He read everything from Teddy Roosevelt bios to Lena Dunham’s memoir, and he regularly attended author readings.

And then he started to write.

He wrote letters because he’s old school. He wrote to authors. He wrote to estranged relatives whom he wanted to tell off (they probably had it coming). More than anyone else, my father wrote to Jamba Juice, in which he owned some stock. My father always enjoyed the rush of gambling, but he’s not into the track or cards. Instead, every stock purchase is an entrée to a new adventure. “It’s the ultimate game,” he often tells me.

Jamba wasn’t just another stock for my father, who’s well into his eighties. Jamba was an elixir that ignited a newfound, unbridled passion. “I thought that the company had a future,” my father explains. “I thought because of their i…