Happy Birthday Tom!!!

Happy Birthday to Tom - light of my life, love of my lifetime! You are - absolutely - the best man in the world !

My Sweetie grew up as the oldest boy in a family of 8 kids. This is the earliest pic we have of him: his first portrait, taken when he started school.


His family was totally, prayerfully Catholic and their life revolved around church. It was way too intense religious imo. Of the 8 kids only one is now a practising Catholic and all the Catholic-on-Catholic marriages ended in divorce.


The farm was pretty small and not very mechanized. As a boy and young man Tom worked his ass off when he wasn't in school. In school he was an outstanding football & basketball player, and earned top grades.


In college at Rutgers he majored in education. As a freshman they put him on the 7th football team (or something like that) but he wanted to compete so he joined Crew where he could be a starter. This is one of the few pics we have of him rowing. He rowed Stroke on the 8-man and 4-man varsity teams. In 1969 his team were the NCAA National Champions in the 4-Man Heavy division.


After a couple of days of practice teaching he decided that teaching was not for him and returned to school, in Madison this time - where he was a leader of the local hippie/yippies and grew this beard. There are many stories from this period but I have been sworn to secrecy on the ones he has told me, lol. Okay, I'll tell just one. His hippie group had an FBI informant (all hippie groups back then had one) who was always coming up with harebrained ideas for stupid stuff they could do. His most harebrained idea was that they should kidnap the Homecoming Queen at the big Homecoming football game, then make a political statement. Tom was supposed to run onto the field, throw her over his shoulder and then race off. A monumentally stupid plan. No one was going to do it of course, but I think they told the informant they would just to screw with his mind. FBI informant was the only one who showed up at the game, ready to rumble.


After about a year of hippiedom Tom cleaned up his act and went all Joe Cool. I think he did it for the "chicks" but he's not talking about that. At least to me he's not. Still, doesn't this pic make you miss the 70s?


When I met Tom he was a pin-striped CPA in wingtipped Florscheims. Crunchy conservative on the outside with a creamy, wild yahoo center. A totally delicious man! Every day with him is a brand-new adventure!