Last Words from His Father

Tom: I don’t know if he thought he was going to die. I just — I was in the hospital when he actually, he didn’t die then but he knew he was going to die.

In the office. Now, he was red-faced. Just kind of real red-faced normally. And I looked around at him and he was white as this sheet right there. Blood had just completely cut off, and of course I didn’t understand it then, so I took him home. My mother called the doctor and the doctor sent him straight to the hospital. And he told me later that he knew my dad was going to die, that he had a total blockage.

And that night about 11:30 p.m. he did die, but in the meantime, I went to the hospital just as soon as I could get in there, and he was just in awful pain. He said “Tom, I’m going to die.” And I said “well, maybe not” or something to that effect, but he said “no, I want to dictate to you what I want happened.” So he said “get a piece of paper, and write down what I tell you.” I was a lawyer then, I could do all these things. So I wrote down everything he said, and the first thing he had was ‘take care of your mother.’

That brings back some… real pressing times… Anyway, he told me everything he wanted me to do. And so far as I know, I followed that to the letter. And that’s when I gave up any law practice; I started in the real estate office altogether. And it went from — he had me, my two brothers, and that was about it, and one telephone. It wasn’t six months before I had about five salesmen, three or four telephones. [laughter]