Remembrance of Tom

By Ancil Payne

Seattle, October 20, 2001

I first met Tom when he gave a eulogy for my friend of many decades and Eric's father, Mac Redman. He did far better for Mac than I am able to do for him.

Shortly following our meeting, he called suggesting lunch and "to ge advice regarding 'CeaseFire', the handgun control organization. Long aware of how useless the advice of a man my age is about anything, I took my "advice" along on a three by six inch piece of paper commonly referred to as a check. He graciously but with the speed of light accepted. I thought that was closure! Tom calculated it was simply a map appropriately marking another potential oil well! We became friends.

Tom was one of the most multi-dimensional men I have ever-known.

First came his family. His children attest to his love, care, and commitment.

His work was his governor and after-hours telephone calls elicited his cheerful response: "I am here at my post serving my soverign." He was a prosecutor without peer: never having lost a case brought before a judge or jury. His care, consideration and sympathy for others was always evident: but in adversary matters he made Mike Tyson look like Shirley Temple.

His major concern was handgun control, and he willingly took the leadership in the 'CeaseFire' organization where he became its heart and soul, it's motivating force, and its principal fund raiser. Only his foresight in hiring a professional staff made possible dramatic progress in the enactment of what little gun safety legislation we have.

If I was remiss in making this further observation, I know Tom would never forgive me.
We are all terribly disturbed and saddened by the terrible tragedy in New York City. The very thought of the loss of some six thousand lives through the terroristic strike frightens and saddens each of us.

However, it must be pointed out that those six thousand lives represent but one-fifth of the thirty thousand lives lost each year from the use of handguns: 30,000!

We generally lunched once a week to discuss organization legislation and to roundly castigate anyone who opposed either our specific, or more general political or social approaches to life.

One of the joys of lunching with Tom was gaining acquaintance of various exotic eating arenas such as "Pho-Bac" (Rainier Avenue) where the only item on the menu is Pho soup, BUT one had to choose between a large or a small bowl and the large bowl cost 50 cents more. I was always criticized for ordering the "large" which Tom pointed out as hardly at all any larger. It wasn't the cost - he tipped more than the cost of the soup - it was the New Englander's principle of the thing. We had hot pastrami at Roxy's (where he groused that one sandwich alone could close every artery in the body), sandwiches at the Merchant's and the Central, fish and chips on the pier at Pier 56 - and fancy places like that.

Tom simply looked on lunches as an interlude between breakfast and dinner during which further business could be done.

But he hugely enjoyed fine wine and good food. He was an excellent cook. He was also an accomplished mountaineer, a skilled wood worker, a person who knew and enjoyed baseball, the symphony, the theatre, and gracious social life.

He was both fun and compelling. He was not for the flaccid nor the faint of heart. He cared for individuals, their lives, their liberties, their rights and their welfare, and he carried out those commitments to all of us.

We mourn his death. We praise his life.