reminiscence by Barry Rinehart, from the memorial service.

I met Thomas Reid DeFore twice. 

The second time was in a Sunday School class here in Boulder in the fall of 1978 and I thought he was a liar.

I was new to the class that morning, and when asked about myself I told the class that I had just made it into the Fairview High School production of West Side Story.  This guy sitting next to me spoke up and said that he was in West Side Story too. This surprised me because I had never seen him at any of the rehearsals.  I wondered why would someone would just blatantly lie about something like that.  Then he gave me one of his wry smiles and said, “I play the violin in the orchestra.” 

I instantly liked him and we soon were good friends.

The first time I had met Tom, was a week or so earlier than that Sunday, but I didn’t know it. I was in a sophomore geometry class and the teacher, Ms. Limar, wrote a problem on the board for us to solve.  I raised my hand to take a stab at the answer, but I was wrong.  Then this guy, sitting in the seat in front of me raised his hand and got the question correct. I instantly knew I didn’t like that guy. He was the smart kid.  Besides, he was always making little jokes to the guy sitting next to him and I found that to be distracting, but all I saw was the back of his head.

Several weeks went by and Tom and I, who had now seen each other at several after school rehearsals by this time, were once again in Sunday school class together and he asked me if I had finished my geometry homework – the teacher had given us a special assignment… he said he had found it particularly challenging.  I wondered how he knew I had geometry homework… I asked, “Do you have Ms. Limar too?”  Tom looked at me as if I was joking and said, “Yes.” But I was confused. “What period do you have her,” I asked.  Now Tom could tell I was serious and was shocked.  He said, “I’m in your class!” I was like, “You are?” And he said, “Yes! I sit right in front of you!”  And now I’m shocked, “That’s you?” So I asked him to turn around to see the back of his head, and sure enough, it was him.

So, that’s the second time I met him.

In High School, Tom and I became best friends.  We were both a little shy back then and certainly not running with the popular packs, but we definitely new how to entertain each other.  Because Tom was so shy, for the longest time I felt like was one of the few people in the world who knew how amazing this guy was.  But Tom grew up and bloomed into a confident and public man. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see and meet so many of you and know that you too were able to discover this wonderful treasure.

I want to share with you a few memories I have of Tom from these early years, simple stories most of you have never heard, that I feel reveal his character and shine a light on the man he grew up to be.

One of the first memories that came to mind was a time we were walking down the hall in school and someone asked him if he had a quarter on him.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fist full of change and scattered it all over the floor and said, “I have no need of this filthy money” and then walked on. Tom was always very generous and never had a need for filthy money.

Tom and I tried to take as many classes as we could together and always sat with each other so we could talk and pass notes back and forth (a sort of primitive form of instant messaging for you younger folks) and generally crack each other up.  These notes often revealed an intelligent and absurd humor that I found particularly enjoyable in Tom.

One particular exchange evolved into a discussion of combining different movies to get a new type of movies. Tom proposed that we should make film called “Tarzan vs. Godzilla.” I grinned and wrote back, “what about Tarzan meets the Good, Bad, and the Ugly.”  And so it went.

A few weeks later I was at Tom’s house and he said he wanted to play me something. This wasn’t uncommon in anyway. Tom lived only a few blocks from school and we would often go to his living room to listen to music and hang out.  In fact, Tom introduced to me to all sorts of music over the years.  While we were in High School it was The Cars, Dire Straits, Styx, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd and all sorts of new wave bands and some amazing classical music pieces and some wonderful old time jazz he got from his father.  Years later he was on a bluegrass music kick and taught himself to play the dobro, then he introduced me to all sorts of world music, and then, of course, the amazing music from Zimbabwe.  His musical taste and abilities always amazed me.

But, on this particular day, Tom turned on his Dad’s reel-to-reel tape recorder and played me the theme of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly –which, as some of you may remember goes . But instead of the [DEMONSTRATE] part, Tom had put in a Tarzan yell, so it went [DEMONSTRATE]. He did the entire song this way.  I was amazed. When I asked him how he had done it, he said he had taped every Tarzan movie he could find off the television until he found Tarzan screaming in the right key and then edited each one to the right length to fit the song. All of this was before computer audio editing software. It was all done with splicing and dubbing.  Tom was a creative genius.

Besides the many classes Tom and I had together many things together we also made films and slide/tape shows, we ran radio club (which featured a weekly show called Knight Life on Thursday nights on KBOL 1490 AM here in Boulder), we climbed mountains, backpacked, and camped together, we took all sorts of road trips together around the west, we even went through two graduations together.  Although we didn’t go to the same colleges, I came back to attend his graduation from CU. Tom had learned that the person sitting next to him in the graduation service couldn’t come to the ceremony, so he suggested I pose as him and come in his place. So, with Tom’s help, I got a cloak and hat got to sit next to Tom for the entire graduation ceremony. We talked and joked our way through the entire ceremony. I even got to pick up an empty diploma.  Tom was always up for an adventure.

A couple of years after college, Tom and I became roommates in an apartment just a couple of blocks from here.  It was living with Tom that I really got to know him at a deeper level.  I learned that Tom knew how to make some mean hash browns and burritos, he consciously chose to live simply, he was disturbed by the “mall-ification of America,” he loved nature, and he had no problem falling asleep. He could even fall asleep in mid-sentence.   More than once we’d be talking around this candle he loved to light in the living room and he’d start to say something and pause dramatically and then wouldn’t say anything and I’d look up from the candle and he’d be asleep.

In fact, Tom once told me that one of his great fears was that he would fall asleep at the wheel while driving.  Then one day he came home late one night from work and told me this hilarious story… he had an early call on a job and worked a really long day and was heading back to Boulder on the Boulder/Denver turnpike. He was so sleepy that he ended up pulling over to that rest area on that overlook you come to just as you hit the ridge of Boulder County.  He was only ten minutes from home, but, he was so sleepy that, just to be safe, he pulled over to take a little nap.  Unfortunately, when he woke up he didn’t remember where he was and saw the steering wheel in front of him and thought he had, in fact, fallen asleep at the wheel and screamed and screamed and grabbed the wheel and tried to get the truck back under control. The fact that Tom told me that story shows that he was a humble man.

The thing about Tom that I loved the most was that there was a deep peace and simplicity about him. There was never any judgment or pretension . . . I could always be myself with Tom. Completely myself.  And that’s a rare quality in this world.  He was such a loving, sweet-spirited man that whomever encountered him felt at-ease and safe.

There were only a couple of times in my life where I know I disappointed Tom.  One of the most significant ones was in High School when I had been out the night before and had drank too much with this girl I had a crush on and was trying to impress.  I had come too late and was clearly drunk and my Mom had busted me. The next morning I was feeling terribly ashamed and guilty and was experiencing my very first bad hangover. In one of our many classes together I told Tom what I had done, he didn’t say anything, but he sighed deeply and shook his head.  I knew I had disappointed him—which was a terrible feeling. He could tell I was feeling bad about things and in the middle of a class said, “Come on.  Come with me.”  We left the class. He walked me to his house. Got his families blue station wagon and took me for drive to Rocky Mountain National Park for the rest of the day.  We talked and talked.  I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.  He was such a loving friend with a spirit of peace and kindness and grace that is so rare in this world.

Tom and I stayed in touch over these last 28 years.  Every time we got together it was like no time at all had parted.  We’d see each and it would be like, “So, anyway, what I was saying last time we talked was that the planet is in a lot of trouble…“ and we would just continue the conversation as if we had only paused for a brief moment.

The last time I saw Tom was three months ago when I came to Denver on business.  I drove to Boulder and he took me out to dinner and insisted I sleep in his bed because he had to go pick Laurie up at the airport early in the morning.  As I lay in Tom’s room and I felt at home and taken care of and I went to sleep with a swirl of memories in my head and so happy to have such a dear best friend.

I’m so grateful we met.  Both times.