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Friends Jack Troy, left, and Tom Reed enjoy a visit together. Their lives overlapped because of their common interest in refractories – bricks, mostly — some of which were so exotic only a few people in the world knew about them in the detail he held.
Friends Jack Troy, left, and Tom Reed enjoy a visit together. Their lives overlapped because of their common interest in refractories – bricks, mostly — some of which were so exotic only a few people in the world knew about them in the detail he held.
Words are one of the most touching ways to honor a person. As a writer, I might be partial to the written word, but a written tribute is something that can be read again and again and treasured. A tribute can also be one of the most challenging writings.
But when Jack Troy asked me about submitting a tribute following the passing of his dear friend Tom Reed as a letter to the editor, I knew it deserved a more fitting location than the Editorial Page.
Tom Reed Sr. passed away June 30. To many, Tom was just the guy next door, but he was so much more than that. Jack’s words epitomize his dear friend, a self-made international businessman who could likely be found in an old T-shirt and jeans, likely driving his old truck with his dog by his side.
When Tom Reed was alive it was rare to find him standing still, and now that he’s still forever, it is just about as hard to sum up what his life meant to me, but here goes.
Tom was, hands down, the most highly educated unschooled person you could hope to meet. He graduated from high school with straight A’s a year early, at 16. Our lives overlapped because of our common interest in refractories – bricks, mostly — some of which were so exotic only a few people in the world knew about them in the detail he held. His voracious curiosity, and mechanical expertise, together with classy business acumen enabled him to move massive quantities of materials literally around the world, with savvy that didn’t draw attention to itself.
In his prime, he could be found wielding wrenches inside a crusher half the size of a boxcar, whose hundreds of parts he knew as intimately as a watchmaker finagles a Timex. His machines were so gutsy they could turn some of most dense materials known into stuff as fluffy as powdered sugar. Noisily. Dustily.
One of the first times I met him I asked where the huge supersacks of AZS were headed. “Chile,” he said, as if it was Delaware. He was one of the few people in the country whose knowledge of aluminum zirconium silicate – one of the most adamantine of non-clay refractories, capable of holding its own at temperatures well above 3200F. — could be obtained, processed and sold, usually to the steel and glass-making industries, whose decline he bemoaned. He was an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, having at one time an interest in a gold mine in Michigan.
Tom came into my life in 1987, when Bobby Oxnard moved Maryland Refractories from Alexandria to Ohio. (Bobby had donated bricks to the Juniata College ceramics program, basically underwriting all the kilns we built between 1972-1988). Bobby may have suggested I meet Tom, who, among other pursuits, was a refractories recycler – two magic words to any potter.
Several years ago, Tom called: “Jack, I came across something you might want to take a look at.” Twenty minutes later we were prying the lid off a crate of German origin, containing 75 24”x 24” x 3/16” silicon carbide Advancer kiln shelves with a retail price of $400 each. He’d bought them from a company that had gone belly-up trying to make solar panels. To Tom’s delight, it had been underwritten by the Obama administration. Knowing how I vote, he said, “There’s your tax dollars, Jack, ready for you to buy back,” which I gladly did, sharing the bounty with other potters. Another time he sold me several thousand high quality insulating firebricks that are currently worth $10 apiece; more potters from Syracuse to North Carolina benefitted.
In the 1980s, Tom’s “yard” was like a Rube Goldberg wish-list, or a monument to ingenuity – steel girders; a huge pile of blue-tinted glass chunks, gears the size of apples to some as tall as a VW bug; steel grates of all dimensions, galvanized tubs from Huntingdon’s old ice plant brimming with pure alumina spheres ranging in size from gumdrops to baseballs; perforated alumina discs 3” across and an inch thick, housing the tiniest of holes, for filtering molten aluminum to make foil and beverage cans. Bricks — all sizes and shapes, some too big to pick up: silica type, from Mount Union; others of pure zircon; chrome magnesite, from which I built my last, age-appropriate, kiln. One pallet of brick I bought had been there so long it had a 3” diameter tree growing out of it. It was like a movie set without actors, where all manner of drama might play out. There is even a pond where fish would swim to the shore when Tom’s red truck, looking like a demolition derby survivor, pulled in to feed them. Once I took a sculptor for a visit and he got so excited I thought he would need a change of underwear.
But more than the “things” Tom acquired – like the contents of an entire defunct steel plant in Birdsboro – was his encyclopedic memory, so proportional to his quest for self-education. Information stuck to him like burdock to velvet – changes to the steel and glass industries, genealogy, the current scrap value of every imaginable kind of metal (he carried a magnet the way some people carry a Bible or the Constitution), the metallurgy of alloys, the construction and operation of small coal mines like the one his father owned, coke ovens and old iron furnaces. Tom endeared himself as a born storyteller, remembering the past as compelling narratives, like history’s own voice grabbing your attention. His eyes would brighten when his memory’s hard drive booted up. He got a kick out of remembering things awaiting recollection and never once in my presence did he say anything like, “I used to know that, but…”
Mentors sometimes don’t realize they are teaching us by just being who they are and including us in their lives, even a little bit. Tom Reed showed me how loving what we seem born to do is a gift we both receive and share, even unintentionally. He lived an abundant life, in spades, investing himself with his family, all of whom have roles in a complex enterprise.
Being a benefactor of his generosity is equal in value to my first teacher’s lessons – two men who most enabled my career as a potter. There’s probably something of each of them in everything I make.
Compared to those who knew him better, I sat in the cheapest seat in the peanut gallery, but I was paying attention. I’m still paying attention.
And that’s how you write a tribute! I could picture Tom the whole time I was reading it. Thank you, Jack, for sharing that special friendship. I know Tom is missed by many.
Do you have something to chatter about? Email Becky at bweikert@huntingdondailynews.com, call her at 643-4040, ext. 159, or find her on Facebook.
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That was a wonderful Tribute. Thank you for sharing
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