Since we laid Tom to rest exactly a month ago, we have continued to get requests for the eulogies. Here is the first of the three eulogies for Tom from the three people who knew him best.
Oof. This is a lot of people. Bear with me here. There was a mixup at the hospital, they accidentally gave Master Jude all of the charisma and all the volume so there was no voice left for Mary Leigh the Non-Gourmet Introvert.
You know, it was always mysterious to me how I turned out the way I did, an uptight wallflower born from the two loudest and most-attention seeking people I know, and as a kid it was difficult for me being Tom Fitzmorris’ daughter. I hated the attention, my name and life spilled out across the airwaves, the strangers coming up to me saying “So I hear you like hamburgers!”
It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s, and sadly, in many cases, after he got sick, that I was able to see that actually, I got most of what makes me, me, from him. And as I toiled over this speech, still, last night, after an excruciating week of allowing my perfectionist tendencies to take over, I was comforted in remembering that it was these same perfectionist tendencies that made Tom Fitzmorris who he was.
Most people know his public persona as a goofy jokester with a pompous air, a steadfast opinion, and a love brimming over for his hometown and the food that connects the 500 people that live in it.
But we had the unique privilege of knowing the man behind the curtain, and the incredible amount of toil and sparkling creativity that made him Mr.Food.
He was a talented writer, but it was his grit, his ineffable work ethic, his laser-focused passion on a single topic, his unfathomable prolificity, his brutal honesty, and his brilliant features like The Food Almanac, The Eat Book, and the Dining Diary that made him Tom the Gourmet Food Writer.
He was a broadcaster, but it was his velvet voice, peppered with an unnecessarily wonderful singing voice, his quick dry wit, his utter lack of shame, his creative alter egos, his countless shticks, his April Fool’s gimmicks, his Thanksgiving shows, his brilliance off the cuff begging for callers, and his ability to connect with listeners in a way that turned them into friends that made him Tom the Gourmet Radio Guy.
He was a publisher, but it was his painstaking design work using obscure and often original typefaces and artwork, his ads designed, written, and drawn himself, his goofy cartoons drawn in fountain pen, his 40-page layouts created copy by copy, letter by letter with a typesetting machine, and his distribution via cold-calling and offering free copies to friends until it caught on that made him Tom the Gourmet Magazine Publisher.
He was a father, but it was a lifetime of daddy-daughter dates, his hilarious voices while playing the Polly Pocket board game, our marathon Saturdays spent eating either bad buffet breakfasts or delicious homemade Tom waffles or biscuits and playing Putt-Putt and riding around listening to the Oldies, goofing off in the Mardi Gras museum above Arnaud’s with me between courses, cooking mouth-watering brisket for the masses at our school fair, and somehow being omnipresent while still working more hours in a week than anyone could imagine, that made him Tom the Gourmet Greatest Dad In The World.
He gave 200% percent of his time and passion and talents and soul to sharing his love of food with the world, and then he came home and found another 300% to give to being our Dad. He gave everything, to everything, every single day of his life.
Like countless other things that will immediately come to mind, Tom was a man of repetition. If you heard him make a joke twice, you can be sure someone’s heard it 1000 times. But he had a quote he recited frequently,and we laughed it off as another silly Dad-ism. It was a note on his computer when he turned it on, he had it written on little notes around his office. It was his private mantra. Duty is joy. I never gave it much thought before, but I looked it up while writing this speech to see if it was original to him or someone else. It turns out its from a poem, which knocked me to the floor when I read it. The poem says:
I slept and dreamt
that life was joy.
I awoke and saw
that life was duty.
I worked — and behold,
duty was joy.
This was him! All of it–life, duty, work, success, failure–it was all joy to him.
But this isn’t just another funeral, I don’t want to just drone on about the same old guy doing the same old things. This is Mr. Food we’re talking about! We’re here to talk about food and wine and restaurants and cooking!
So I’d like to share with you a particularly noteworthy meal we had at Saba in 2018 not long after they opened (at least 6 months after of course). The atmosphere was cozy and since we’d had such a lovely dinner we decided to move over to the bar to have a drink before ending the night. A drink over which he confided to me, for the first and only time in his illness, “I know there’s something wrong with me, and I know that this is the end.”
Of course, I couldn’t have possibly known what this really meant, and the tragedy that would unfold over the next seven years.
Today is an ending, but this isn’t the end. Tom Fitzmorris was a force. He was a supernova of talent and strength and love and light and the joy of life.
Of gratitude and fortitude and finding a way to be the very best you can be against all odds. Against all odds. There will never be another like him. We were all lucky to have been a part of it, and it won’t ever be forgotten.
As it turns out, it was an honor to be Tom Fitzmorris’ daughter, and it’s an honor to be able to carry on any of the little parts of him that made him special.
Thank you Dad, for sharing you. Everything dulls without you.
