Tribute to Tom

By Elizabeth M. Wales

Seattle, October 20, 2001

I want to share a few words with you in tribute to Tom.

We met in boarding school in Massachusetts when we were 16 and married on Tom's 21st birthday while still in college -- we were a deeply attached and happy couple for most of our 27 years of marriage. After a period of change on my part we divorced last year: it was hard, especially for Tom. Given all that he gave and all that we shared, I am desperate to share just a glimpse of the joy and the strength of the man I knew as Tom.

I have asked Tom to help me some and he is most assuredly there beside me in spirit and conviction, telling me not to hesitate and to go forward. I think I will get this mostly right…

First, it is important for you all to know that Tom was at a strong and happy point in his life. He had worked hard to get there.

Shortly before I left for Europe to visit with Tommy and Amy and attend the Frankfurt Bookfair, Tom and I had dinner. He cooked a meal for us and as many of you know, that was, of course, a treat in itself. We could again enjoy each other's company with ease and we could also share our passionate interest in the children and in our lives. We talked about the kids, his new computer, his plans, his home improvement projects, my business, and, of course, our dear old, scraggly cat, Sam.

Tom would want you to know that he was vigorous, optimistic and full of plans. He would want you to know that he loved his neighborhood and his city, Seattle. He would want us to continue to believe our city is a good, good place. He would be so delighted that you are all here, not for his sake, but so our children, who are, of course, quite grown and strong -- but so Tommy and Amy would know without a shadow of a doubt that the world is good and filled with good, good people.

The calls and emails, the cards and flowers and your presence here, each and every one of you, are deeply affirming and healing for me, for Tom's family and I hope for Tommy and Amy. Thank you for coming.

On a lighter note, Tom would be quite worked up at the cost of airfare many of you had to pay. If he could, he would have intervened strenuously on your behalf, for a fairer and cheaper airfare, likely speaking in what Amy Wales calls his "lawyer voice."
For Tom, indeed, was a man of deep convictions, rock solid loyalties and wholly admirable goals. But, what I want to share with you especially was his large capacity for love and for joy. Tom was so very good-natured, and gentle. He loved life and you could tell.

When we were first married and still in college, we took particular pleasure in having small dinner parties with friends and family at our 23rd floor apartment in Cambridge. It was a little place with a spectacular view facing the Charles River. Tom had been majoring in pinball, bowling and poker, but after we were married he hit the books with a vengeance and in the space of 18 months almost entirely recouped his compromised college performance. However, when off duty he certainly knew how to revert to the old relaxation mode. I will never forget several evenings, after a good dinner and some wine, with friends going out onto the little balcony facing the Charles, and if there was a little breeze he would spit just a bit off the balcony and we would watch this marvelous ballet of spit as it drifted, dropped, swooped upwards and danced in the air drafts and evening breeze. Tom would narrate the progress of the spit until it disappeared from sight or sometimes mysteriously dissipated into the air, or landed in a splat somewhere.

To our children he was Poppy or the Popster, for me he was Tom or just T. He was our rock and he will be our guide.

High in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest or at the family home in Maine were perhaps Tom's two favorite places.

He liked to take the family motor boat, Kitty Wake, out at night when the stars were bright, glide quietly to the middle of Seal Cove and cut the engine. He would ask me to look,

"Do you see all those stars? Of course, I know they are stars, but imagine they are pinpricks, letting some of a vast light in and we are in darkness, barely aware of the light."

Tom wants us to treasure the light and each other. For those he has touched, with the help of his spirit and memory, with the help of each other, this will be possible - I promise you that, my dear, dear T.