REMEMBERING TOM [R, 12-15-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: REMEMBERING TOM [R, 12-15-22]

 

C. Thomas Cone, Esq, died this morning, Dec. 15, 2022.

When I write a eulogy for a friend, I try to find some theme, something that can be used to explain their whole life. The only theme I have for Tom Cone is this: I never understood him. I don’t feel bad about that; I don’t think anyone else ever understood him, either.

Sometimes, people you don’t ever know do you the greatest favors. So it was with some anonymous clerk in the housing office at IU,

In September of 1955, the IU housing office put into the same room in Linden Hall, in the long-defunct Trees Center, a naïve farm boy from a very small high school and a brilliant city kid from the biggest high school in the state, only because neither of us smoked. From that came a 67-year unique friendship. I am reluctant to say that Tom and I were best friends, for I don’t want to compete with his other friends, but our friendship is, I think, one-of-a-kind.

Although I never understood him, living with him as college students, and enjoying his friendship over the rest of these years, has allowed me a few insights…

Tom was a fundamentalist. The fundamentals for him were law, family, knowledge, friends, the Red Sox, and bridge, not always in the same order. He loved justice more than law, competition more than winning.

Tom was a rascal. He loved practical jokes, and they sometimes backfired, like the gardening competition when the police got the idea that someone was threatening to murder one of Hancock county’s elected officials. Tom was never the favorite person of the local police, and so he never admitted that he was the guilty party who had lost the contest and so had hung dead flowers on her door with a note that said, “I’ll get you next time.”

He did not suffer fools gladly, but he could be remarkably patient with people like me, who were never up to his intellectual level, but who shared his fundamentalist values.

For 67 years we have had nothing in common, except values.

One shared value was family. He loved Helen, and was sure she could have done better. I know that, because, on our wedding day, he told me that. He loved my children and grandchildren, and taught them math shortcuts, and wondered why they turned out so well. I love Sally, and was sure she could have done better, and I told him that many times. I love the Cone children and grandchildren, and while I could not teach them any math, I have been able to do weddings for them. I’m sure that Sally is the only reason they turned out so well.

Another shared value was justice. It pained him that the adversarial system so often required him to defend people he knew were guilty. He did not like the system in which guilty people got off simply because he was smarter than the lawyers he was up against. [Although he did revel in being better than any lawyer he had to face.]  But he knew that justice could not be done if everyone in the system did not do their best.

A third shared value was learning. Tom was always the smartest guy in the room, which both pleased him and irritated him. He loved being smarter, but he also loved competition, and he wanted people to be smart enough to challenge his mind. Few of us could. Starting out as the smartest guy in the room did not keep him from wanting to keep learning, though. Throughout his life he loved ideas, and debating them.

I am a preacher by profession and a theologian by education, so I think in religious terms. Thus, I shall say that God and Tom have a lot in common. For one thing, they are both good at testing your patience. More importantly, I’m never going to understand either one. If you are going to love either one of them, you have to do it by faith, acceptance. I learned that earlier about Tom than about God.          

The last time we had lunch together, he had trouble with speech because of his stroke. At one point he tried to ask me if I were still preaching and couldn’t quite get the thought right. Finally, he said, “Do you still say the words?”

Well, yes, my old friend, I do, so I’ll say these words: I love you. Thank you, for being my friend, for being incomprehensible, for being you.

John Robert McFarland

The photo is of Linden Hall. Tom and I lived in the middle, upper floor.