Memories from Ron

I received the following message from an old friend, Ron - a colleague of Tom's from one of his first jobs in the "professional world":


Lisa and Katie,

I am so very sorry to hear about Tom's passing.

I realize I can't imagine what a time you've had, and are having. Thank you for sharing so much of what you've been through on your blog.

In light of your request for stories about Tom, I have a couple.

Tom and I earned our friendship. We were coworkers at BellSouth who didn't know each other particularly well when we were assigned to build a web site together (BellSouth.net's business-products web site). I was the programmer, he the artist; my job was to build the site, his job was to make it look pretty, effective, and functional. Together, our job was to design and organize it.

I remember there were about 3 days where we had a steadily-building professional argument, both of us increasingly frustrated with a communication we knew should be going much better than it was. He had never built a web site of the type I thought we were designing; I'd never worked with a real artist (only a fake artist, i.e., myself). We both had lots of experience in our respective fields -- we were both good, and knew it about ourselves and each other. That's why we were confused and frustrated. We both felt: I know how to do this, and I know *he* knows how to do this. Why can't we get it worked out?

It boiled down to this: I was writing a computer program. He wasn't really building artwork for a web site; he was building artwork for a *computer program*, which would *use* that artwork to build a web site. Computer programs (um, and their programmers) are... let's say... finicky. Computer programs (ahem, and their programmers) expect the world to provide conveniently-sized little pieces of artwork in a predictable, unchanging way. Tom had never worked with such constraints, or needed to; he's a powerful, skilled artist, who mastered building Web sites early and quickly. There was nothing he couldn't design or build. So he didn't know what I was asking for, or why I was asking for it. Similarly, I couldn't quite grasp why he didn't know what I was asking for, because the things I needed seemed "obvious" to me. (They weren't obvious, of course, but I felt they were.)

We had a couple of knock-down drag-out conversations during those three days, and eventually came to an understanding of what we both needed to do to get the site to work. It was settled. Clarified. But we were still a little het up from that interaction.

And then, two days later, he came literally bounding, bouncing into work, grinning his head off, more like Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh than anyone I've met. I believe it was the middle of the morning, or perhaps early afternoon -- I think he'd taken you in for a checkup. And, exuberantly, he told the following story: "Ron! Ron! I had a revelation last night! It's funny -- I really saw this in a dream! Lisa and I were sleeping. You know Lisa's pregnant, right? So in my dream, we were sleeping, just like we were in real life. But then I floated up above my bed, and looked down on the bed, and saw a grid of HTML table cells covering the bed! I was in one cell, and Lisa was in another cell. It even had a merged table cell between columns 2 and 3 where Katie is, where Lisa's belly was sticking out. It was awesome! I finally get it!" (Maybe that's not exactly what he said. But that's how it stuck in my head.)

After that, he and I always had big grins when we saw each other. We’d built a bridge. We were no longer merely coworkers who respected and liked each other; we were, suddenly, friends. The rest of that project went *very* smoothly, and every project after that. Talking and working together became decidedly *fun*. We were able to communicate as well as brothers, both because we'd actually learned to speak each other's language, and because we'd cut our teeth on the same very challenging emotional and technical situation.

I was also aware that he'd shared something very personal with me. I was, and remain, honored and humbled. How is it that a conversation with me had become part of his dream about his wife and daughter, part of this tremendously tender and iconic moment?

Much of my friendship with with Tom is embodied by that situation: the fact that he'd share such a personal story with me; his excitement and pleasure at making such a mental and professional breakthrough; his sense of irony that a computer concept could be "revealed" in a dream; the fact that our conversations and struggle to work together had had such a deep impact for him; and the fact that working through that situation made us friends.

The other core image I have of Tom is of his telling the following story.

He had a teacher during high school who was both a farmer and a physicist. As I recall, the teacher would invite the kids to his house, where they'd stare up at the stars or the sky and talk about what was literally going on in the universe, as best science knew at the time. When Tom told this story, he would adopt an extra-heavy Southern accent -- his teacher's accent -- and talk about black holes and Einstein's theory of relativity and Newton and Galileo and laser optics and gravity. And then, in the middle of a sentence, Tom, still playing the role of the teacher, would cut himself off: "now, y'all'll have to excuse me... I have to go feed the chickens." Then he'd half-limp off stage (out of his cubicle), as he left the kids to ponder the stars while he went around back to the chicken coop.

Tom's telling of the story seemed to say: this very smart man, this very good teacher, was from the deep South; he was a farmer who loved and respected that part of his life, and could have had a happy life doing just that. And yet, without giving that up, he became a physicist, and could excite other people in science and astronomy and seeking truth and understanding the world and the universe. He put the responsibility of feeding his chickens above the social nicety of being a host, and showed that to the kids. I felt that Tom was empowered and excited to have been part of that, to have had his mind expanded by this man who had raised himself up, and who was so warm, and such a good teacher, as to make his students part of his family.

I appreciated that Tom kept striving for understanding the world, the universe, his place in it. His humility. His shockingly high skill with pen and paint and computer art, doing very good work very quickly. His ability to do deep, conceptual abstract paintings as well as clean, professional business graphics, and how he seemed at peace with both of those being expressions of himself. His enthusiasm for the things which excited him -- biking, Aikido, his new computers. I appreciated that he got so much into Aikido; I was very interested in Aikido too, at the time.

It's important to me that I have grown as a person, a professional, and a friend with him and because of our work and fun together.

I do not dismiss Tom from my thoughts. He's still here, he's part of my life, despite how little we've talked since I left town 12 years ago.

Losing him hurts.


Please feel free to contact me at any time, now or in the future.

I wish you both, and your combined family, the very best.

Ron