So I walked into the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance office about a week into this new year. Tom knew a good thing when he saw it, and I’ve been working there ever since. But I too knew a good thing when I saw it. 

Tom was a good thing. 

He was a con artist certainly, without the self-benefiting aspect of a crook. 

He was a dispenser of tall titles and tales, who never had to lie. Oh, he could tell a good story, several of them, and you didn’t always have time to listen. But mostly you did listen, and what he said was not only interesting and clever, it was important.

He had dreams like no one has dreams. Big ones which included little people. But they weren’t his own dreams alone. They always included others. In fact, he took visions from folks they didn’t even know they had, and gave them form and direction. And always a name. There was a committee or a panel for everything, with a chairperson or coordinator in every role. He believed in participatory democracy. Get everyone involved, make them feel impor­tant, because, well, they were. 

Abrasive, some say. Impatient, more nearly. He knew he was dying. Strange. We’re all dying from the day we are born. But he was dying quicker than he was living, and living was more important. He wanted every minute; and he took them. He didn’t miss a thing. Oh, he might misunderstand something, but it was rare, He had the uncanny ability of getting things right,

I started hanging·around the Alliance office. One of professional operations going. Everything was planned, spelled out· for-that day when he wouldn’t be there. He set it all up.

He couldn’t stand time to be wasted. He was racing against it. He knew it was limited. I sometimes found myself feeling pushed. Why can’t he relax? Why won’t he quit badgering? But the feeling was misplaced. On the occasions when I felt that, I had missed the point, it was my sloth or insecurity speaking. It wasn’t Tom’s lack, it was mine.

So what now? What I saw was the dream coming to life, didn’t he have time to get out? How much will I have to rely on myself now?

Tom was a rare one. They don’t come along like that very often. He was brilliant; obviously, you say. A genuis; of a sort, I hear.

Good thing they don’t come along like him too often. We’re too common and ordinary to handle the input. The ordinary rules can’t apply to people like Tom. He didn’t really dominate meetings, he gave a vision.

Prophet, seer, leader. All overused terms. What was he? An organizer. Of course.

Rich? Not in money or material goods. Tom was himself. Completely, unforgiveably, lovably.

Like a kid the day my friend Mike brought in the photographic enlarger and set up a darkroom in the basement of the alliance. You·could see Tom’s eyes glow. And his mind spin. The possibilities for classes, printing, photo-art. And of course he wanted to know how to work it. Insisted on standing in the damp basement, taking notes, working the strip-printer himself, and bestowing on Mike the title of “patron of the arts.”

I fell in love with him that afternoon. I’ve been in love before. With parents. With a woman. With some famous people I know and respect. With a best friend. This too was a special love. The kind which means life, and gives you gifts just by the presence of this other person. 

I have few illusions. And the real things of existence are more complicated than what I have written about so far. Nonetheless, something very important, and essentially quite simple was happening because of Tom. He’s dead now. But like the river he loved, he flowed through our midst. Rushing, pounding and changing all he touched.

After Tom DeGaetani’s death on February 10, 1978, Glenn Pontier served as the editor until July 1995.