I have been privileged to know Tom for over 30 years, having worked for him at Fannie Mae a quarter century ago. There were almost no senior executives at Fannie Mae of his intellectual capacity, and fewer still (if any) equaled his ethical standards. I remain impressed by his ability to have accomplished so very much and with so little. And by his ability never to let the frustrations of that place defeat him. I never saw him fraught by it. He “lived” in a different place, I suppose. That place was his own mind. He knew something (usually a lot) about almost everything. His mind never stopped thinking. About everything.
He had a dauntless optimism, I think. About people, the world, its future.
I have no knowledge of what Tom was like before his AA days, 50 years ago. But he was likely a very different person. I’m intrigued by what changed him. And how.
I am no expert on these things, but I have seen three types of “recoveries.” The first is that someone simply decides they have had enough, and they stop. They have lost everything and seen the light. This seems easily the most common. The second is more dramatic, ecstatic even. These people have had religious experiences, some not less than astonishing. But neither of these fits Tom.
The third category is those lucky few who somehow had an exogenous strength of character and will, not simply to change their behavior, but to recreate themselves. To convict themselves thus, perhaps: “I’m going to become a totally new and different and superior person.” And then to make it so. That, to me, is Tom. He created the “Tom” we knew.
You see, there was a nobleness to him. He lived an ethical and unselfish life, to be sure. But there is more. I have seen usually just shadows of his acts of kindness. Why just shadows? Because Tom was not one to do what he did for the praise of others. He served his own master. Himself. I think that is what nobleness is about. To this day, Tom has never told me what he did to help and protect me at Fannie Mae. He and I never talked much back then. It is because we understood each other’s motivations and thoughts so well, I think. But I am thankful that over the past ten years we were able to make up for such a prior deficiency.
So, that is what I believe Tom decided 50 years ago, that he would live his life on a higher level. A life of intellect and integrity. He was not a religious man, but nonetheless brings to my mind the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, which Winston Churchill said “remains the last word in ethics.”
Tom was always optimistic about the world. Though it was no paradise when he was still with us, it is worse now.
I love Tom.
