People Who Make a Difference

My favorite year of high school was my sophomore year. The administration building of my high school had burned down weeks before the beginning of my freshman year, and the solution was to run split shifts. Freshmen and seniors went to school in the afternoon; sophomores and juniors in the morning. So my sophomore year I would catch the bus at 6:00 a.m.

Why did this make the year good? Because every morning Daddy would drive me to the bus stop two miles away and wait with me until the bus arrived. He had always worked from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., so this was the year of my life when I saw the most of him—when I got to know him the best, this champion of my life.

And once the bus arrived, the father-substitute for us all was behind the wheel. "Uncle Tom" never had a bad day. I don't know what his tenure was as bus driver for Forest Lake Academy, but he was always there, always glad to see you. He knew every student by name, and remembered you forever. I lived the farthest away from the school, so I was always the first person on and the last person off the bus—I spent lots of time with him. When I saw him at our 40th reunion, he still recognized and remembered me, asked how my brothers were, where my mother was living now. He cared, and you knew he cared.

Uncle Tom—I can't even remember his first name (was it Mark?), and no one called him "Mr. Tompkins"—never took a sick day, never complained, never raised his voice. What he did do was instill a sense of worth in kids who were having a hard time, and reinforce the value of every student who crossed his path. His voice always held a smile. Uncle Tom was the person you never wanted to disappoint.

I don't know if the dorm kids knew him as well as the town kids, but we town kids were blessed to have this warm, caring, loving man in our lives.

He was ageless and timeless, and so it seemed impossible to learn, yesterday, that he had died.

I vaguely remember that he had a son and daughter a few classes ahead of me, and my heart goes out to them in their loss. If he was as successful as a parent as he was as a mentor for thousands of teenagers through the years, then his children lived a charmed life.