Today is coincidentally (or is it?) the birthday of the person who inspired Tom on his life’s path: his mother Aline Gremillion Fitzmorris. Her brothers said Aline could make a meal out of nothing.
In a conversation with my brother about a year ago he remarked, “So you’re kinda living like a normal life with Tom in this situation,” and I guess that was true. It was anything but normal, but we did a lot of the things he had always done.I took over the business which meant we had to be out, but I knew a normal life for a person in his state meant being housebound and eating to live. But Tom lived to eat, and who are we kidding? He was never normal.
It is that very thing that brings us all here today, to celebrate a life very well lived.Tom forged his own path, ran his own race with singular focus, paid no attention to his detractors, and soldiered on no matter what.
He had a brush with death almost two years ago when he was hospitalized for two weeks and every single doctor told me he would not leave the hospital. My response to them was, “you don’t know that guy.” A week later after leaving the hospital we had lunch out.
I’ve watched Tom for 36 years beat the odds, but he’d been doing that since the beginning. He rode his bike around town to different Time Savers beginning at the age of twelve, sweeping floors and filling coolers while other kids were doing normal things.
He earned enough money to buy his own car when he was barely old enough to drive it. He earned a scholarship to this very school only to be kicked out in his senior year because he worked all the time to pay the remainder of his own tuition and didn’t do his schoolwork. That was probably the only time a school expelled a National Merit Finalist. And certainly the only time a person leaving a school on those terms spent the remainder of his life as their greatest ambassador. And here we are at that very school today.
He ground out his senior year at Rummel while still working and moved on to UNO where he worked at the Driftwood as a cartoonist. It was there that he discovered The Flambeau Room in The Student Union, where for under $2 a gourmet meal eaten on white tablecloths could be had. Up to then he had driven around town with his friends in his own car eating fast food. Tom could not get enough of this new world of fine dining, so when the editor of the Driftwood replaced Tom with his friend, Tom asked about writing a food column, mainly so he could hang at the Driftwood offices with girls.
And so it began. Jim Glassman wrote a tribute on Facebook about the early days of Figaro, where Tom filled newspaper boxes and wrote and did everything else, earning a promotion to editor at the age of 23.
When the paper ended he started his own thing, using the principles of nonstop work to eat out, write editorial, sell ads, draw ads, sell subscriptions, collect money, and deliver newspapers.
He crafted The New Orleans Menu at a typesetting machine, where he spent every waking hour with a stick with a ball attached, pressing a single letter or period onto the paper. He regularly delivered on schedule a newsletter, And in his spare time, he wrote books!
Tom and I met when he began The Food Show on WSMB in 1988. Talk radio was in its infancy but even then a show about nothing but food was risky. My show followed his and each day he left a single gourmet chocolate on the console for me. I chased him down the hallway with the first one, thinking he left it. He smiled and said, “It’s for you.” He was a romantic too.
When we got married a few months later he was finishing perhaps my favorite book, called The Eat Book. He asked me to proofread it and in my careless handling of it, I deleted the entire chapter for “C”!! Imagine the size of an encyclopedia chapter for “C.” I would have killed me but without a harsh word, he just sat down and got to work redoing it.
When the kids arrived he found time to be Daddy. During the week we lived separate lives: his was in the city eating at restaurants and I took care of the kids eating mac”n”cheese at home. Tom’s weekends belonged to the family. They went out all day to Shoney’s, then the Courtyard, then to Sillyville or Putt Putt to play. He did Daddy daughter dances and scouts with both kids and drove Jude to Christian Brothers at 6:30 am after coming in from dinner the previous night at 11.
He cut trails in the woods and built a treehouse and cooked for our extravagant birthday parties at The Cool Water Ranch. He cooked for 50 each year at Thanksgiving. We looked forward to his food the whole year. He did the brisket booth at the kid’s school. He used vacation time to be a camp counselor for the scouts. He sang Barbershop and in church choirs.
When all of this made it harder for him to go three times to a restaurant to write a review, he started the Eat Clubs, bringing his listeners together for an evening of food and wine. I think these were the original wine dinners so ubiquitous now.
These Eat Clubs became Eat Club cruises and hundreds of people joined us as we traveled the world, experiencing food and culture together.
Then Katrina happened. Tom had two premonitions about that. He had told me for years that one day the city would be flooded like a bowl. And one night he shot up in bed and was unsettled by a dream. Jude had just started Jesuit and Tom dreamt he did not finish there.
The storm splintered our family forever. Jude graduated from Georgetown Prep in DC, a Jesuit school but not this Jesuit.
Tom took the time we lived in DC to finish the cookbook he always wanted to do. He wasted no time setting up an office in the basement of my brother-in-law’s mother. While he was downstairs on the phone calling every restaurant to see if they were open, his hostess Mom Mom was upstairs eating her lunch: Four club crackers with a single slice of banana as she has every day of her life. I will always love the delicious irony of Tom’s world of gourmet eating and the club cracker lunch in the same place.
Tom’s list of open restaurants became an invaluable resource for everyone here. Restaurants used it and vendors used it and diners used it as the city crawled its way back. Tom pursued the return of New Orleans relentlessly as he finished the cookbook and published it.
The success of the cookbook sparked a followup book called Hungry Town, which opens with dinner at Restaurant August, a happy new beginning for the city and for Tom returning to the city. (In an odd twist, Restaurant August was his last meal 20 years later.)
Tom kept up this breathtaking pace until about 10 years ago when things started to change. We continued the cruises until 2018 and he continued the show until 2021. He still kept working and driving home at night without complaining or confiding his fears to me. After he stopped the show and the writing we kept eating because that’s what Tom does.
We had lunch on his birthday at Commander’s Palace , then brunch 3 days later at August. He marveled at the food at both of those meals, and exclaimed throughout each meal how much he loved those restaurants. His palate never failed him.
Tom was never going to quit. And I was never going to quit on him. So God snatched him right in the midst of us living our “kinda normal” life.
His relentless hard work and indefatigable spirit has produced an incredible legacy for the city he loved and its enduring food culture which he loved even more.
Tom Fitzmorris was a humble servant and a faithful steward of the many gifts God gave him. Thank you for your appreciation of our beloved Tom, and for coming to celebrate this life so well lived.
Any Jesuit Blue Jays from any class that would like to join us in singing the alma mater, please come to the front with Tom.
Singing of the Alma Mater.
Closing remarks…
“Goodbye Columbus,” the original theme song for The Food Show, exemplifies the attitude Tom lived by. He woke up each day with the thought,”Got to say it’s a lucky day! Kiss the moon goodbye and be on our way.” There’s even a prescient line or two: “I got a feeling that you’re gonna hear from us,” And, “taking the world by surprise.”
Addressing Tom
You’ve been a faithful servant. But now your work here is done. So Tom! Be on your way. It’s a lucky day.
He leaves the church to “Goodbye Columbus.”
