A MESSAGE FROM THE FAMILY

EULOGY FOR MY DAD Clarence W. “Tom” Thompson On dad’s 65th birthday, he got a shirt that said “65 is not old, if you are a tree”. Nearly 30 years later, I would say, 95 years is not a long time if you are a Bristlecone Pine, they live up to 5000 years. But if you were born in 1928, think about some of the things you were witness to: The Great Depression, World War 2, the nuclear age, and subsequent wars, Horse drawn carts were replaced by trucks, self-driving cars appeared, and prototype flying cars are being tested, jet planes, and moon landing, The Orioles won 3 world championships, but to be honest the last one was 50 years ago when we still dialed our telephones attached to a wall… The development of TV, the demise of broadcast TV, computers that took up a whole floor of an office building and were replaced by laptops… It was an amazing time to live, and modern medicine, such as the quadruple bypass, allowed dad to experience it all. Dad lived an amazing life. To make it through nearly 95 years with a sharp mind and good physical health is a great thing. He regularly won half of our card games and rummicube, and we never cut him slack. He also won 50% of our pool games, which might say more about my inability, but the man could shoot right handed or left handed, and did so as recently as January. Apparently, he was known as a bit of a pool “hustler” at the Knights of Columbus hall. He even recently learned a new card game that requires considerable strategy. It’s called “oh Hell” which is OK to say in a church, or “Shtup your neighbor” which is probably not OK to say in a synagogue. Dad grew up in relative poverty, born one year before the Great Depression. He lived in a rental house on Loretta Avenue in Baltimore where his bedroom was built as an overhang in the back of the house and had no heat in the winter (of course there was no A/C either to prevent him from enjoying the legendary Baltimore summer humidity). He started working at age 12 at Earler’s Variety Store where his earnings helped offset family expenses. He worked hard for many years afterwards, ending his career with a daily commute to NYC that totaled 3.5 hours. But we all have to envy that he retired from Seagram’s and drew a full pension for nearly 40 years, which was longer than he actually worked for them! He retired so long ago that when I was filling out medical appointment forms that asked for the date of retirement, he couldn’t remember, so I would just make up different dates in the 1980s. Dad joined the naval reserves in the early 1950s. On a training cruise from Norfolk to Jamaica, the destroyer escort, USS Roberts, lost power in a storm off of the NC outer banks, an area nicknamed “the Graveyard of the Atlantic”. The crew used a mechanical wheel in the hold to turn the rudder to avoid capsize. He recalled that he and other engine room sailors were ordered to clean up spare parts locker where the floor was littered with nuts and bolts and other hardware that had fallen from shelves as the ship rocked. He grinned when he described how that job was made easier by pouring boxes of mixed hardware through the porthole into the Atlantic. His work in the engine room likely led to his future deafness in the left ear. But his experience had a greater impact on his preference for a land-based assignment, which he secured at the National Security Agency in Washington. He said he learned that because of their security clearance, sailors serving there would be the first to be evacuated in an emergency, even before the Navy nurses. (So much for women and children first!) But then that’s the kind of thinking that helps you live to 94! We’d like to imagine that dad lived the mysterious life of a top-secret code breaker, but as a sailor he was assigned less glamorous jobs like tearing in half pallets of reams of blank paper that had been printed with a code word that became obsolete, then accompanying the trash to an incinerator with a trusty side arm in case any nefarious spy might be looking to make a scratch pad. When off-duty he worked a job at the ships’ store so he could save up money to get married. Of course, everyone here has probably heard the story of the love that bloomed down by the trash cans in the alley behind Lindsey Road in Baltimore. And for 60 years, nothing was more important to dad than his darling Chickie. She loved and cared for him, and made him eat the healthy foods that sustained him into old age. He loved her more than anyone in the world, and cared for her as her memory failed and she depended on her guidance every day. For all the happiness Dad may have had in the past few years, and despite his deep love for his family, I think the thought of re-uniting with mom was probably the thing he wanted most. Dad kept just a few keepsakes, and one was a short note from her, with no date, that must have been written during one of the times he had to travel for work. It read, in part: “Honey, I love you very much. Your weekend at home filled a small part of my longing for you. Do try to be home more often, we miss you.” I put that note in his coat pocket. Now he can be with her forever. I want to share with you the five most important things that Dad taught me. The 2 minor ones first: Dad enjoyed fireworks, as his did his dad before him. If memory serves me right, it was grandad who burned holes in the canvas porch awning when some sort of wild explosive he lit came back off course toward his house. But Dad was keenly aware of the dangers, so one day when I was 7 or 8 (the age when I might be thinking of starting my own pyrotechnics career), he took me out to the back yard and put a nice sized fire cracker into a bag and hooked in the fence. He said, “Pretend this is your hand holding a fire cracker.” He lit it, and the bag blew to smithereens! As a result, I still have all my fingers, and a cautious respect for fireworks. Lesson #2: Some fathers impart deep wisdom in father-child talks. Don’t know about my siblings, but this was definitely not the case for me. No advice about alcohol, but since Seagram distillers sent me to college, what could he say? No advice about women, but somehow I ended up finding a wonderful wife. No advice about jobs, so I became a psychologist. And you know the difference between a psychologist and a savings bond? The bond eventually matures and earns money. This is the only advice he ever gave me: One evening, probably after a long day at work, he said: “Son, whatever you do, stay away from computers!” With advice like that from a man who was very likely one of the first business computer programmers in N.Y.C., I have always taken that advice to heart. Now the next 3 things, I learned from Dad not by what he said, but by what he did. Number 3: Work hard. Don’t work all the time, but when you have something to do, get it done! When he lived with us, and we talked about what was coming up that day, he’d say: “Son, you’ve got your work to do, do it.” Solid advice, because you’ll never achieve your goals it you don’t persist. And persist he did. Even weakened by cancer he’d still wup you at a card game. As Steve noted, his brilliant analytic mind was on stage as you watched him formulate strategies in assembling puzzles or playing games. Number 4: Be slow to anger. I think I saw dad get really mad only once. I heard about a second time and I wish I’d been there. The first time, when I was 10, I got my first HO scale train set. I was sooooo excited. A Pennsylvania Railroad electric engine with 8 wheels, and a set of freight cars. We put the tracks together, put the train on the rails, and looked in the box for the transformer to power it. IT WASN’T THERE! He got sooooo angry and mumbled some choice words about the salesman. But what could we do but wait until the stores re-opened to get a transformer? To this day I think he was even more upset than I was. Now that I think about choice words, I will say there were actually 3 times he got upset (that is if you count all the storm window episodes as one category, or 1000 times if you count them separately.) Those E.J. Korvette aluminum storm windows refused to move in the tracks, but he had fun cussing at them. And the one episode I wished I witnessed was the infamous last time he cut Chuck’s hair down in the basement. Our home barbershop electric razor cut about ½ of the hairs, and its dull blades simply ripped the other half out. Since I went first that fateful day, I endured the trauma and escaped upstairs. While Chuck was perched in his seat, on top of the table under the light bulb, the razor began to short out a lot more than usual, and kept going on and off. So about halfway through the haircut, Dad hit his limit. He yanked the cord from the socket and threw the razor across the basement where it shattered against the wall. Then he took some cash from his pocket and told Chuck to go up to the barbershop. A new razor was not purchased. It was a useful lesson becauese in my adulthood, I have tossed a couple of contrary appliances off my front steps, and I will tell you that revenge is quite sweet. But I wanted to talk about being slow to anger. Dad possessed a calmness that would impress even the great Zen masters. Even when my brothers and I performed silly walks modelled on Monty Python while practicing our roles in Lisa’s wedding procession in this very church, Dad calmly requested that we knock it off. This, of course, was completely opposite of mom’s reaction. So while we regularly expected to infuriate mom, we had to study dad’s reaction to judge if we were going too far. If he got to the level of saying; “Knock it off.”, we knew we were over the line. And so it should be no surprise for you to learn that as kids, when we had frazzled mom’s nerves to the very end, and she threw us out of the house, we would trudge off to Dad’s bus stop and hide in the bushes waiting for Dad’s bus to return at 6:00 so we could plead our case with him on the way home, hoping his calm manner could get us back in the house. I’m sure the poor man heaved a sigh of relief most nights when no one popped out from the bushes. The Fifth and most important thing is to love your family. Love your spouse first, above everything else (except God, of course, but I’ll talk about that next). Then love your children, and their families. Nothing to him was more important. If it were possible for everyone to abide by this rule, we’d live in a far better world. And over the past 10 weeks we’ve seen how this lesson has played out as his family stood by his side through his final days. A continuous stream of family there to comfort and care for him, and even to break the rules by serving 7 & 7s in the nursing home. He would tell us that he worried because we were working too hard to care for him. So, like a petulant son, I blamed it on him. I told him it was his fault for brining us up the way he did. Most people wait until a loved one passes to have a Celebration of Life, but thanks to his family, dad participated in his own Celebration of his Life. Dad loved God above all else, and followed the teachings of the Catholic Church. St. Andrew’s was his favorite place for worship, where he and mom sat on the right side for Saturday night mass for many years. When he couldn’t attend, he watched on you-tube, recognizing some of his friends from the backs of their heads. He prayed the rosary regularly with Mother Angelica on EWTN, even though she had passed in 2016 and came on as a recording. It was, I think, a great comfort for him to attend St. Andrew’s on TV during the pandemic. On one of these Sundays, October 2, 2021 to be exact, we were watching mass celebrated by Msgr. Chapel celebrating the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels. I found the Msgr’s sermon so compelling that I replayed the service later and took notes. So now I get to tell you why. The sermon began with a discussion of cosmology, or how the Church teaches about the origin of the universe, God of course, is at the center as creator. Next in line are the Archangels, Angels, then come the Saints, and finally the rest of us ordinary humans. The church also teaches that each of us has a guardian angel for protection. The Msgr. said that his favorite portrayal of a guardian angel was from the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Many of us have seen the story of George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart. When it seems his life is falling apart, George is saved by his guardian angel, who, of course, is name Clarence. Msgr. Chapel told us that Clarence helped George Bailey see what was important in life (which, incidentally, was his wife and family). He went on say that the role of our guardian angel is to protect, intercede and challenge us. It was then that I saw the parallels to our Clarence here, who has been our guardian angel, protecting and nurturing his children, interceding for them when they were hiding in the bushes, and challenging them to work hard and love their families. In the movie, Clarence the guardian angel was awarded his wings when he completed his mission on earth. Our Clarence has completed his mission, and he has earned his wings. Tom Thompson

OBITUARY

Clarence "Tom" Thompson

Name: Becker Funeral Home
Address: Westwood, NJ

26 April, 1928 – 25 March, 2023

IN THE CARE OF

Becker Funeral Home

Clarence W. “Tom” Thompson, 94, of Hillsborough, NC, formerly of River Vale, NJ, passed away Saturday, March 25, 2023. The beloved patriarch of the Thompson family was born in Baltimore, MD to Clarence H. and Mary, and is survived by his sons Thomas (wife, Laura); Charles (wife, Susan); Stephen (wife, Lynn) and his daughter Lisa Hogan (husband, Kevin); his grandchildren Halley, Nicholas, Sarah, Elliot, Ethan, Abby, Ian, Meg and Colin and great-granddaughter Frankie Jo; his sister Jean Fowler (husband, Bob); as well as many nephews and nieces. He was predeceased by his darlin’ wife, Dorothy “Chickie” Thompson and his sister Gloria Lydard.

Tom’s first job was with the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company. He then served in the U.S. Navy, where he was introduced to the first “IBM” machines at the NSA in Washington, D.C. This experience, an accounting degree from The University of Baltimore, and a passion for problem-solving led to

a long career as a systems analyst for Joseph E. Seagram and Sons. The company transferred him from Calvert Distillery in Baltimore to Park Avenue in New York City, but Tom always kept his “Balmore” roots close to his heart-- rooting for the Orioles and dreaming of fried softshell crab sandwiches. When

Seagram’s offered him early retirement, Tom gladly traded his three-hour daily commute for thirty more years of traveling with his wife, visiting with friends, volunteering and helping his kids raise their kids.

He was an active parishioner of St. Andrew’s Church in Westwood, a past Grand Knight of the St. Thomas More Council Knights of Columbus, and a member of The St. Andrew’s 50+Club and the River Vale Senior Friendship Club.

Tom loved puns, cards, games, jigsaw puzzles, daily Sudoku, everything that kept his keen mind sharp and aware until the end of his long and rich life. He was also a great storyteller. His favorite story was of how he met the love of his life in the rowhouse next door. Family was everything to him and, in the

end, it was by far his proudest accomplishment. He never missed a weekly family Zoom meeting on his iPad, which he would gladly show you how to use.

The family will receive relatives and friends at Becker Funeral Home, 219 Kinderkamack Road, Westwood, NJ on Friday, March 31st from 4-8 PM. The Funeral Mass will be held at St. Andrew’s R.C. Church, Westwood, NJ, on Saturday, April 1st at 10:30 AM. Interment to follow at George Washington Memorial Park, Paramus, NJ. In lieu of flowers, donations would be welcomed to feed the homeless via the Knights of Columbus, St. Thomas More Council # 2188, 40 Crest Street, Westwood, NJ 07675.

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