Tom’s sudden passing comes as a shock to all of us who’s lives he has touched along the way. He was such a special man in so many ways. One of the things I admired most about Tom was his passion. Whether it was family, friends, wine or even NYC sports, you could always count on Tom’s unwavering passion and loyalty. This passion was especially evident during major family events (weddings, graduations, etc.), where you could always count on Tom to ensure everyone felt included and they were partaking in the festivities. Some of the fondest memories I have of Tom are associated with the annual trips to NYC that Christine and I would share with Darlene and Tom. We would always catch a couple of popular plays, enjoy fine dining and do some of the NY touristy stuff. We all thoroughly enjoyed these trips. One of the funniest experiences we shared on one of these trips was when Tom decided we needed to stop at a NY Yankees store to buy a NY Yankees jersey with his great, great uncle’s name embroidered on the back, ‘Waite Hoyt’. Upon entering the store Tom approaches one of the sales people and enquired about their embroidery process, as if he knows anything about embroidery 😊. His main concern being, he didn’t want the letters to ever fall off the ~$150.00 jersey he was considering purchasing. Being the conversationalist that he is, within 5min we were surrounded by 3 sales people and the store manager. They convinced Tom that, between the adhesive that they use and the technologically advanced method of ironing, they guaranteed the letters would never fall off. With that Tom gave his approval along with the spelling on his great, great uncles name. Within 20min Tom completes his purchase and we are walking back to the hotel. Along the way I decided to ‘Google’ Waite’s name to check out the facts that Tom was sharing (bragging about) the entire weekend 😊. The first Google attempt returned “no information found”, so I ask Tom to show me the back of the jersey, to ensure I had the correct spelling. Therein lies the problem, Tom paid for one too many “T’s” in the spelling of Hoyt(t) 😊. Our first reaction was, we need to return to the store so they could fix the error, but Tom was quick to point out that he made too much of a stink about the letters never falling off. He preferred chucking the event up as another one of those humorous stories that will far out live the story that would have been told if he had gotten the spelling correct. I thought to myself, what a great outlook. Most people would have gotten upset about the situation but b/c of the way Tom handled it, here we are many years later still talking about it in such a positive light. What a legacy! Thank you for the love and laughter Tom we miss you dearly!