Today I Lost A Friend
Today I lost a good friend and coworker. Tom Landon passed away after fighting COVID. He was 67.
Tom and I worked at the same global biotech company together, starting back when it was still a private company, and then working together there as it was purchased by a different company, then merged with another, then purchased again. By the time I started at the company, in 1999, he’d already worked there for six years. I was in R&D. He was the manager of the technical support group. We soon knew each other pretty well as coworkers.
In 2007, I was ready for a change. Politics in my department, extra long work hours, and a lack of promotion, drove me out of R&D. And I was doing this while raising two special needs babies. It was at that time that I sat in on phone calls with tech support, listening to my colleagues help scientists who called in and emailed from all over the world, helping them choose and use reagents and troubleshoot instrument issues. It was interesting, and I was surprised by how much I already knew. The tech support agent I was paired with was leaving for a new position soon. Her position would be open.
After listening in all day, I stood in the hallway with Tom. “This is a cool job,” I said. “Maybe I would be interested in doing this.” He looked at me and, without blinking an eye, said, “You’re hired.”
“Whoa, whoa!” I said, laughing, “I didn’t actually apply or anything.” But I knew in that moment I would take it, and so did he. Within a couple weeks, I’d moved to the new position. I’ve been in Tech Support ever since. It had more stable hours, a more cohesive and professional team, the same good pay and benefits, and an excellent boss in Tom.
When I joined, there was another tech support agent in the group named Susan Nulf. Susan was a hoot. She was loud and energetic, and she wasn’t shy about sharing her opinions. She loved animals. She had a horse and cats, and would even “rescue” worms that were in the parking lot after a rain, by picking them up and placing them in the grass. She had a heart of gold. But Susan was retiring. She had lots of plans to travel and relax. Just a few weeks after I started, she celebrated her last day at the company. We had a little gathering for her with treats, and then we all bid her a final farewell as she left the room for the last time.
The following Monday, our team was working in the office (we all worked in the same room, on-site, at that time), when Tom came out of his office and announced that we needed to get off the phones and stop what we were doing for an urgent meeting. A couple minutes later, Tom took a deep breath, then he told us that Susan’s sister had called to inform us that she had passed away over the weekend.
We were shocked and saddened, of course, made all the more tragic by the fact that she had just retired. And we had respect for Tom, too, for delivering the bad news in a respectful and straightforward manner. I knew it couldn’t have been easy to make such an announcement and take care of the arrangements. Tom was an excellent manager. Always calm and collected, thoughtful, and empathetic. He knew his stuff and was always on top of things without being micromanaging. He hired skilled scientists with good “soft skills” for customer work, and capable of working without a lot of oversight. He also wore other hats in the company, such as doing editing of publications.
In 2011, Tom was laid off from the company. We didn’t want to see him go, and to this day I don’t understand whatever flawed reasoning went into that decision. But he wasn’t gone forever. Instead, he did freelance editing, including for our company. A coworker, Phyllis, whom Tom had also hired and was an agent in the team, became my new manager.
About four years later, in 2015, we had an open position for a tech support agent. Phyllis came to me and said, “Tom wants to come back to the group, but work as an agent alongside you, not as a manager. How do you feel about that?” I told her I would be delighted! It would be strange to have the ex-manager now as an equal in the group, but I couldn’t imagine a better person for the job. Phyllis asked the same question of each of us in the group. Every one of us agreed it was a good choice, and we all looked forward to working with him again. A couple weeks later, Tom took the job. He was now taking customer calls and emails like us. He said then (as he has said many times in the years that followed) that he had no interest in ever managing again.
For the next ten years, Tom has worked that way, alongside me and the other agents. There were many changes in that time, with new systems, another company buy-out, COVID lockdowns, new systems and products, and the growth of the group to include members at seven different locations across the country.
In 2019, there was a sad event in Tom’s life: the death of his beloved wife, Kristin. She was a fiction writer. Naturally, her death hit Tom hard. It took the wind out of his sails, and he was never quite the same. But he returned to work after a period, and got back to being the reliable and insightful team member he’d always been.
Then, around three years ago, Phyllis retired. Soon after, I became a manager of the group. And just like that, I was managing the man who had once managed me. But it didn’t hurt the friendship that Tom and I had forged. It was strange, truly, to have to do annual reviews of him and make sure he met his metrics, et cetera, but he always had my respect and friendship first and foremost.
Then, last Monday, Tom called in sick. I can’t really remember him getting sick before. He had started with symptoms over the weekend, and tested positive for COVID, even though he had been vaccinated, and had been generally careful. Over the course of the week, he was treated with the COVID antivirus, Paxlovid, but his symptoms continued to worsen. He still let me know, every day, that he wouldn’t be able to make it to work. Friday he said it was the worst day yet.
This morning (a Monday), he didn’t make it to work again, but this time he didn’t call in. We were worried. I sent messages, but got no response.
Then a little before noon, his son, John, called to let us know that Tom had passed away in his sleep, at home. Given that he’d been sick with COVID, I’m guessing that was what took him. (It is a lesson to all of us that though COVID is now endemic, it is still infecting people, and a few people are still dying from it, like Tom. We have to remain vigilant.)
When our HR rep and site manager informed me of Tom’s passing, my mind immediately went back to that morning in 2007 when Tom had announced Susan’s death.
It was now my turn, as manager of the group, to do the same for him.
With a heavy heart, and after informing a couple other managers, I called an urgent meeting of the team. It had to be done by video call, since we are now spread out across the nation or working remotely from home, but I told people to drop whatever they were doing and go off the phones and to join me in an urgent meeting in five minutes. We all gathered at that time.
I let them know in a gentle but forthright manner, just as Tom had done for Susan.
Of course we were all shocked and saddened. Speechless. I managed to hold myself together pretty well, deliver the news and condolences, and let the team know I would be there to talk about it as they needed. After the meeting, I had to continue the notifications, calling Phyllis and the others who had retired in recent years or moved on to other groups in the company. It wasn’t easy being the bearer of such horrible news. I now fully know what Tom felt back then.
Tom’s desk still sits as he left it, with his papers stacked and a light jacket over the chair. His notes sit beside his monitor. His reading glasses are perched on a little stand. His laptop sits idle on the desk. It was hard to walk past it all today. At some point in the next day or two, I’ll need to go through Tom’s desk and collect his personal things to give to his family. That’ll be hard, but it’s important I take care of it. It’s what he would have done for me. And I had to draw up a new work schedule for the team, assigning his phone hours to others. It wasn’t easy to remove his name from it and send it to my coworkers. Many others in the team had known and worked alongside him about as long as I had.
The truly tragic part of this story, though, is that Tom was about to retire in just 19 days. Like Susan before him, he didn’t live long enough to enjoy his reward for a lifetime career of dedicated work.
Tom was a connoisseur of cocktails and tea. He loved fresh oysters on the half shell. He knew everything there was to know about the history of our company and its products, and shared his knowledge. He had a dry humor and keen insight. He would spend his time off with his family or at his time share on the Oregon coast. Often he and I would go on walks together in the early afternoon as a break from work, if the weather was nice. I’ll miss all of these things about him, and will think of him when these moments arise. The office will seem a lot emptier without him.
One of his favorite cocktails was a gimlet, a simple cocktail made half with gin and half with lime juice (traditionally). So tonight I made a gimlet in his honor, alone in my kitchen, and gave him a toast.
Farewell, Tom. If there’s an afterlife, and if there’s any justice in the universe, you are returning the toast next to Kristin. Rest in peace.
