By Nathan Whitaker
The phone rang several times and I cringed, noting the hour. It was late, far too late for phone calls. It was finally answered by a voice I hadn’t heard in years.
“Hello?”
“Tommy, it’s Nathan Whitaker.” I was more than prepared to shirk responsibility for the call and volunteer that it was Amy’s idea that we were calling at 11 p.m., but he never gave me the chance. Instead, his tone communicated that he was all but waiting for our random, unexpected, call. That he had nothing better to do as Thursday night turned to Friday morning.
“Nathan! Good to hear from you! Are you still in Tampa — “ he began, but then paused, even as he started catching up after all the years. “What’s going on?”
“Well, we hate to interrupt your evening, but we couldn’t reach our dentist …”
I hadn’t spoken with Tommy for several years prior to that night, so when our 3-year-old’s tooth was dislodged and askew, I paced while waiting for our local dentist to return my call.
“Call Tommy Weber,” Amy, my wife, suggested.
“I can’t. It’s too late, and it’s out of the blue, and …”
“It’s Tommy. You know you can. Call him.”
She was right, of course. Our Midnight List, that list of people any of us can call at midnight, is pretty limited. Tommy was on mine, even though I’d last seen him a couple of years prior when we had returned to Gainesville for a reunion of our Eastside International Baccalaureate class, the inaugural IB class. Amy had attended rival Buchholz around the same time and had known many in our IB class but still was a little anxious about the Eastside reunion. As if I wasn’t. She needn’t have been, though, as we entered and immediately ran into Tommy and his wife, Ann.
“Amy, so glad you’re here,” he said, and in his twinkling eyes, it was clear he meant it. Always the gentleman, always welcoming.
And as a longtime Gainesville resident, he was in a position to welcome us, and so many others, making Gainesville smaller. Friendlier.
Cathy Boon, a Gainesville pediatrician and another Eastside/Westwood classmate, agrees.
“Tommy was one of those rare people who always made you feel like you’re the most special person in the room,” she said. “It could be a scheduled event or just a quick, chance meeting, but either way you always left feeling lucky to have a genuine friend like Tommy.”
I’m not great at staying in touch when there’s not a reunion or a dental exam approaching — in addition to athletes at the University of Florida or the girls at the PACE Center for Girls, Tommy took care of our teeth once we moved back to Gainesville — so I asked Greg Grooms, a Gainesville CFP and Eastside classmate, about the intervening years.
Tommy had chosen to come back to Gainesville, Greg pointed out. Tommy loved Gainesville — his family was still here, his boyhood home and the memories skiing on Lake Santa Fe, many of his childhood friends. No doubt it would’ve been easier to have stayed in Jacksonville and continue his practice, but he wanted to come home. So he did.
“He was the brother I never had and will be missed by Tim [his brother], Emily [his sister], me and so many others,” Greg said. He paused. “Their family treated me like a part of them and Tommy was the same for ours. Many afternoons in high school we’d come home and find Tommy shooting hoops in our backyard. ‘Just waiting for you to get home,’ he’d say, and give that grin of his.”
Greg’s wife, Mary, a Gainesville pediatrician, agrees. “He delighted in making people smile, and listened more than he talked.”
John Roscow knew Tommy’s younger brother, Tim, from Westwood Middle School and the Webers from Lake Santa Fe. Through those connections, like Greg and Cathy, the Gainesville attorney lived life with Tommy for three decades. “Gracious,” he said. “If I had to use a word about Tommy, it’d be ‘gracious.’” Tim, Tommy and the Webers taught John to waterski, and John watched in recent years as Tommy took the following generations of friends and their children out on the lake, teaching them to ski as well. He simply wanted to share life. It was one thing for Tommy to be with his family and friends; but for him, he wanted to share experiences with those and others.
In that sharing, whether it was his passions on water or snow skis, or his knowledge about re-setting a 3-year-old’s tooth, he was engaged. Engaged as a husband to Ann, father to Sarah, Katherine and Tommy Jr., and engaged as a friend to so many.
Gainesville’s a great town. The people are inviting, the students energetic, the geography varied. But since April 5, it’s less … something.
Something intangible, but not ephemeral. And it wasn’t just pediatricians, CFPs, attorneys and former classmates — when anyone ran across Tommy, he stuck with you. And now… a void.
Unfortunately, I’m simply not wired to fill that void. Tommy was unique: quick to smile and listen, fiercely loyal, playful but sensitive. Individually, I can’t replace Tommy, but collectively, we can add to his legacy.
We can keep Gainesville intimate and inviting, one gracious response to an inconvenient, late-night phone call at a time.