What Is This Hollow Feeling?

BY: HANS RICHTER

There must be a single word for it in German or in Yiddish, but I do not know it and cannot find it online. What I do know is that I felt a “something is missing but I am not sure what it is” when I visited campus this summer. Sure, students were missing, and teachers were missing, and staff was down to a minimum few, but I expected all that, and I expected the bustle around the construction of the new Innovation Center and Library.

“What is it?” I asked myself as I picked up a few things from my desk and headed to Dr. Ogle’s office for an outdoor meeting.

“What is it?” I asked myself at home and the next day and the next.

Then, it hit me. An “it” wasn’t missing. A “who” was missing, and that who was Tom.

Tom. For the past several years Tom has been the first face I see in the morning and the last face in the afternoon. Tom, who seemed to be in his signature cart 75% of the time, was everywhere. He put the flag up in the morning and took it down in the afternoon. Between those two symbolic openings and closings, Tom directed traffic, greeted everyone, stopped in the kitchen for a coffee, monitored recess, moved cones about, and weaved his way through the campus several times a day.

Tom did his job and did it well: Tom kept us moving; Tom kept us organized; Tom kept us safe.

Tom did way more than his job: he offered a wide smile under his thick mustache; he greeted everyone and lent a hand before you could ask; he did countless little things that I now notice and thus miss him even more. Once he wrapped my motorcycle in caution tape. It was so funny and cute. I can’t get that image out of my mind or the deep laugh we shared together when he drove his cart by to help me unwrap the mess. Of course he helped.

Tom helped us all in myriad ways, and each year when his face appears on the big screen for graduation, the house roars. TOM!

Tom, I hear you are working elsewhere in Carlsbad. I hear it is a great, full-time job, and you are doing well. That’s wonderful, but still I miss you. We miss you. Hope you visit soon.

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” John Steinbeck