Remembering Tom
What do you say about the man who taught you that Camus isn’t pronounced kay-mus? Who helped you get your first credit card — to Bloomingdale’s, no less? Who got you a faculty parking sticker even though you were a student (until someone complained and you had to give it back)?
I don’t remember when I met Thomas P. Knox, Dean of Academic Advising at what was then Towson State University. It was sometime early in my college days, and because of my friendship with him, my college experience was probably vastly different from most students’. He called me LMH. Most people called him The Dean. I just called him Tom.
His office was next door to the suite that housed the Student Government and various student organizations, the place where I spent a great deal of my time working on the yearbook, heading the Campus Union Board, or just hanging out with the newspaper and student government people. Tom and I had similar interests and sensibilities. We loved books, we loved movies, and we loved making fun of the administrators and faculty who took themselves too seriously. I spent many an afternoon sitting in Tom’s office, eating handfuls of Hershey’s Kisses from the jar on his desk and creating abstract art out of the foil wrappers, which he displayed on his bookshelves.
We had lunch together nearly every day in the (as Tom called it) “Not-So-Special” Dining Room along with a rotating cast of characters: professors from various departments — English, mass communications, history, physics, and occasionally PE — administrators, librarians, and other members of the campus community. We’d discuss the latest current events, or listen to someone grumbling about his department chair or promotion and tenure. We weighed the advisability of two English professors (one Black, one Jewish) taking a Greyhound bus across country to “experience the real America.” It was at these lunches I learned that the word ‘short-lived’ is pronounced with a long i and, yes, professors talk about students the way students talk about professors: “Oh, you have her in your class this semester? Good luck.”
Tom and I talked about books. We talked about movies. We’d go see a movie in the middle of the day. We laughed so much through Amityville Horror that we were nearly kicked out of the theatre. As we were leaving after the movie, one of us (and I can’t remember which) said to incoming theatre-goers: “For god’s sake, get out,” which became a running joke for us.
Tom invited people over to his house for “movie days.” It was the infancy of video, and while most people had VHS (if they had anything at all) Tom had the much cooler Betamax. The current availability of streaming video and On Demand makes it hard to appreciate how exciting it was to be able to watch movies at home. One of the regulars (a professor, now deceased) would show up with porn tapes. Tom didn’t allow them be shown if I was present.
There was the day we ordered pizza and bought pink champagne and sat on the floor of Tom’s office to toast the Ph.D. of a professor friend. The two of them took me to lunch to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. I took Tom’s children to see the Muppet Movie. He came to my graduation party. We would later attend each other’s weddings.
We stayed in touch after I’d graduated. I’d stop in for a visit when he was still at Towson or we’d make a date to go to the movies and grab dinner. Once a year he would come to Annapolis for the annual Towson Alumni meet and greet with the General Assembly. We would mingle for a while, then ditch the reception to go get real food. Although I only saw him a few times a year, there was an easiness to our friendship. We’d immediately fall into conversation about what we were reading or had recently read — and of course, what gossip we had heard about people we knew.
A couple of years ago, Tom told me that he had never been to Broadway, so we made plans to go. We took the train to NY, spent a few hours at MoMA, and saw a matinee of Cats. At the theatre I realized I had left my pashmina shawl in the restaurant at the museum. On the train home, Tom showed me his phone: “Is this like your shawl?” I said yes, and he hit “buy” on the Amazon link. It showed up at my house 2 days later. That was Tom. Always generous. We talked about going to see another show, Beautiful or Gypsy, but sadly we never got there.
The last time I saw Tom, he was grayer and frailer than I’d ever seen him. But his spirit was undiminished. We went to a movie — no idea what* — and then decided to try out a new restaurant in town. We didn’t have a reservation, so we just sat at the bar, decadently drinking rosé, eating only appetizers and desserts, and talking, talking, talking.
I knew he’d recently been ill. When I texted my concern, he wrote back that he was doing better. I sent him a copy of Milkman by Anna Burns to keep him occupied while he was in the rehabilitation facility. A week or so ago Tom’s daughter called to say that she had met with his medical providers, and it had been recommended that he go into home hospice care. She stayed in touch all week, letting me know how Tom was doing and that I was loved — and that Tom knew he was loved. She called Sunday morning to say that he had passed peacefully.
He was an extraordinary man. Smart, wise, passionate, caring. He left Towson to go teach high school English, which he loved and did until he retired a few years ago. How lucky the students who got to experience literature through him, who were challenged and championed as I was. How lucky I have been to be able to count him as a friend. Rest in peace, TPK. You will be so missed, but I know you live on in the hearts of all the people you touched, certainly in mine.
*Tom’s daughter has since reminded me that it was Wonder Woman.
