Photos of Tom

It's still hard to believe my friend Tom is gone. Just a month ago, I had texted him some thoughts on things we could do on his planned visit to Butte – he was scheduled to arrive this Saturday – and his last words to me were a text about how much he was looking forward to enjoying Montana scenery. A week later, he was gone.

Today would have been Tom's 55th birthday, and to commemorate it, I'm going to share a few favorite photos from some of the fun times we shared over our 40+ year friendship.

Tom and I met in 1983, when I was editor of a video game magazine (JoyStik, the largest circulation coin-op game magazine at that time), and Tom's mother, Ann, was a coworker. Ann invited me to Thanksgiving dinner, and Tom and I hit it off and planned an outing to Silver Sue's Arcade to play video games.

Tom was 12 years old, I was 25, and thus began a friendship that grew and evolved over the next 40+ years. We both lost interest in playing video games after a few years, but we replaced those outings with playing basketball, music, or golf, playing with dogs, learning about computers together, and much more.

In recent years, living 1500 miles apart in Butte, Montana, and Evanston, Illinois, Tom and I kept in touch mostly via email. I just did a quick search of my email history, and in the last year, Tom and I averaged two new email threads every week, on a wide range of topics. Last fall, we read Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" together, sending emails back and forth on our reactions to each chapter.

Thanks for the great memories, Tom. Your father summed it up well: "Above all, Tom was a remarkably kind person." To be remembered like that is a sign of a life well lived.