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Most weeks, this column flows easily. A topic has been selected and I usually have thought out the opening paragraph, and what ultimate point I plan to make.
But this week is different; more difficult than I had anticipated. Although I feel compelled to mark the passing of an “auld acquaintance” and working colleague, it has proven to be a difficult task. Perhaps you can identify with my struggle.
Tom Coolman, former Adams County Sheriff, died last week at 55. A smoker since high school, he knew early last year that something was wrong; a persistent cough just wouldn’t go away. When the doctors told him last July it was lung cancer, a serious case, he wasn’t surprised.
Tom and I were pretty good buddies in junior high school. We shared a love of this new rock ‘n roll music and we both had a pretty impressive collection of the latest “45’s.” He dabbled on the drums and I took guitar lessons; we had dreams of being the American Beatles, but the reality of our musical talents eventually became apparent to even us. So, during our freshman year we decided to pool our record collections and offer our DJ services for the weekly Friday night dances at the community center. Had business cards made up; put together a sign to have on stage. Actually did OK with our little effort until local bands became the norm for the dances. No one wanted to dance to records anymore.
Our close friendship just kind of faded away. Nothing dramatic, we drifted apart during high school, got to hanging around with different crowds. I went off to Ball State and then was drafted after graduating; he hung around Decatur and found his niche in law enforcement.
Tom was elected to his first term as sheriff when he was 29, about the same time I was promoted to advertising manager at the Decatur newspaper where I had gone to work after being released from the service in 1975. He was thought to be the youngest county sheriff in Indiana history, but I don’t recall that it was ever researched.
That he was elected four times (he had to go back on the road as a deputy sheriff for four years because of term limits) speaks to his abilities. Tom was a poster-child “people person.” He was a very competent sheriff and a natural politician. Although I went to school and earned a teaching degree (but never have taught), Tom often felt he should have gone to college. But he turned out to be a natural teacher.
Our jobs and community projects brought us back in touch on a fairly regular basis. I helped him out with his election advertising, we’d stop and talk on the street often, and when I became publisher in Decatur, we had a number of official occasions to get together on local issues. We had an excellent working relationship but our old friendship never was really re-established; not until he came to see me in early 1997, about two months after my wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer. He and his wife had just received very similar news and he was seeking advice. We talked often over the course of the next several months, and fortunately our wives were successful in their battles. But after my career brought me to Bluffton, our only contacts came at our class reunions.
Those conversations and get-togethers became something I think we both looked forward to. His second set of four-year terms was ending, he was talking about retiring and moving to Arizona, but that’s really all he did: talk about it. He loved law enforcement and needed to find a way to continue. And he found that in a new course he began teaching two or three years ago. It was a vocational education course on criminal justice. I became aware of his new career in what turned out to be our last conversation of any significant length about a year-and-a-half ago. It was obvious that he was excited about his new role, and a mutual friend later told me how popular his class had become, how good a teacher he was. I wasn’t surprised. I had told Tom that I wanted to get a feature story written on his class since it involved Wells County students, but we never got around to it.
Tom made it clear after his diagnosis that his lung cancer was his own fault. He knew smoking had its risks. He made a point of accepting the responsibility, not blaming the tobacco companies, and of his intention to beat it. He taught his class up until Christmas and had intended to continue, but his stamina and energy just disappeared over the holidays. The cancer and chemo treatments had taken their toll.
As was pointed out by one of the speakers at his memorial service Monday afternoon, Tom did beat it. Maybe not physically, but it never took his spirit.
So maybe this is a difficult column to write because Tom and I weren’t as close over the years as we had been as musical dreamers and young entrepreneurs. Maybe I feel like I missed something that I can never get back.
And that’s a pretty hard thing to write about.
by MARK MILLER
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