Remembrance of Tom

By Harris McCarter

Milton Academy, October 29, 2001

I am Harry McCarter and I speak today on behalf of Tommy's five McCarter cousins. Due to the bond between our mothers, the Wales and McCarter children grew up knowing each other extremely well. Although I was two years older than Tommy, I have no coherent memory of a time when he was not a part of my world.

The Tommy I remember from our early days was a good companion and playmate. He was someone who had good ideas about fun things to do. He was also someone who was a source of interesting and useful new information (the perceived value of which was sometimes enhanced by the fact that our parents were clearly in no great hurry for us to acquire it). My brother Frank, who visited Tommy at Harvard a lot, reports that there too Tommy was an abundant source of useful information and good ideas about fun things to do.

Despite my two years seniority, from early on I experienced him as a peer.

He had a way of befriending and protecting his younger cousins. My brother Bruce, who was five years his junior, remembers being invited to canoe with Tommy on their way to a picnic on Vinal Haven. Bruce had been feeling left out and Tommy's invitation was a characteristic response to that. Also characteristic was the way Tommy dealt with the situation when the size of the waves forced them to turn back. Instead of being scared, Bruce came away feeling they had been on a great adventure. And even though they were forced to turn back, he came away with a feeling of mastery and success. Tommy had a way of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Curiously, he was able to do this even when the outcome might have been viewed some others as a defeat. He was an optimistic boy.

There are special qualities you have to have as a boy in order to operate as a peer with a boy who is two years older than you. And there are special qualities you have to have to be able to operate with a boy five years younger than you and make him feel like a peer and a hero. Tommy had special qualities.

And so, in many ways, it was not surprising to me the kind of man he turned out to be. As a boy he was good natured, kind, generous, ready to compromise in play. He was a sweet, gentle boy, and he grew up to be that kind of man. And I was not surprised.

It was not until just a few years ago that I became aware of another side of him. Watching a tape of him debating a representative of the NRA on the Today Show, I was surprised to see what a fierce and effective fighter that gentle boy had grown up to be. Gentleness, for him, it turned out, was a value, a value he was willing and able to fight for with great ferocity.

I will not try to catalogue Tommy's gifts. But I will say that I have rarely, if ever, known a man so gifted who was so unostentatious in the exercise of those gifts.

And in these perilous and complicated times we need people with Tommy's gifts and values so badly. We are often enjoined to leave the world a better place than we found it. Tommy needed to make no last minute preparations on that score. In ways great and small he had lived his entire life like that. He will be sorely missed.

One way to honor him would be by fighting for what he believed in and carrying on his mission of gentleness. It is not a bad idea, and no doubt would please him. But, as I have heard others note, perhaps we can best honor him by emulating him in being true to ourselves. And I pray that what flowed through him will flow through us and guide us in that difficult task. He will be sorely missed.