Brian David Jarboe

Brian David Jarboe fell asleep in the Lord on Monday, April 13, 2026. An audio engineer at National Public Radio since 1997, and a longtime technical director of its flagship program Morning Edition, he was also a husband, father, and guitar player for numerous bands in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

He had been in hospice since March 5, 2026, and his death was related to cumulative complications from numerous strokes resulting from an aortic dissection in 2023 that left him paralyzed below the waist. For the past three years, he navigated the reality of his newfound physical challenges with both grace and honesty, grappling with the piercing grief of losing his love of live performance and recording, and the loss of the identity he found in being a provider and tireless worker. He was hospitalized six times during 2025, finally suffering a septic event that led to another stroke that contributed to his final decline.

Brian was born on April 22, 1971, at Dewitt Army Hospital in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. During his early years, his family moved many times due to his father's Army service during the Vietnam War, including to Ft. Huachuca, Arizona; and Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Even as a young child, he developed a love of the landscapes of the Southwest and, in a hint of his future career as a sound engineer, could determine which models of helicopters were flying above the bases, purely by sound.

After the close of the Vietnam War, his family relocated to Houston, Texas, where he attended Holy Ghost Elementary and St. Thomas High School. It was in these institutions that he came to love the Church, the Spanish language and Latino culture, and ultimately, the guitar.

He brought all of these loves with him when his family moved back to his parents' hometown of Baltimore, where he graduated from Calvert Hall College High School in 1989. While at Calvert Hall and later at Towson State University, he began to play in rock bands with friends. And at Towson, where he majored in Mass Communication, minoring in Music and Spanish, he began to work at the campus radio station, WTMD. He helmed a popular guitar-focused program and even was the Master of Ceremonies of the Towson Fourth of July parade in 1995.

In 1997, he joined the Audio Engineering department at NPR. Before he became technical director for Morning Edition, he was the technical director for NPR cultural program Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center and many NPR remote broadcasts - including the South by Southwest, Sasquatch, and Bonnaroo music festivals, the Central City Opera and La Jolla Summer Festival, and others. Alongside all this work, he played in numerous rock bands across the DC and Baltimore regions.

At NPR, he also met his wife to be, Caroline Langston, who worked in the network's Development department. Married on July 2, 2000, they joined the long list of "NPR Met-and-Marrieds" that was tracked by veteran host Susan Stamberg.

In 2005, the family moved to Cheverly, MD, where they were surrounded by a loving and supporting community that, along with their respective Catholic and Eastern Orthodox congregations and the NPR staff, were sacrificially generous to Brian and Caroline throughout the three years of his illness.

The family is enormously grateful for the obituaries that NPR programs All Things Considered and Morning Edition aired, which highlight the diversity of his talents. They also invite you to follow his music tutorials and recollections at his BluStrat22 YouTube and SoundCloud pages, and are so glad that his voice and guitar skills will live on for new audiences to discover.

Brian is survived by his wife, his son Alexander and daughter Annabelle Maria, his parents Paul and Helen Jarboe of Towson, Maryland, his siblings Christopher Jarboe of Newark, Delaware, and Margaret Jarboe of White Marsh, Maryland, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins.

The family also wishes to recognize the many medical professionals - too many to name exhaustively - who made many decisions that enabled Brian to live for three years after a near death sentence. These include Dr. Reed Quinn of Suburban Hospital, Dr. Seth Yawki Flagg and Vanessa Jenkins, LPC, of Kaiser Permanente, and finally, hospice nurse Muluso Shamapande.

The 20th century Catholic activist Dorothy Day once made the observation that "Everybody wants a revolution. Nobody wants to do the dishes." In his life, in a city and in a field dominated by so much verbal posturing and hollow moralism, Brian always chose to "wash the dishes" - in ways both concrete and metaphorical. Notably, he reposed only after his wife's Eastern Orthodox Easter, on what that faith terms "Bright Monday." We believe that it is a poignant providence.

In lieu of flowers, the family would ask consideration of donations to Undue Medical Debt, or the Constitutional Accountability Center.