The author first met Tom on Anna Maria Island in Florida. He wrote these reflections about his then new–but now late–friend a year or so ago…
Tom DeMott plays with the Legends. Lanky and deliberately disheveled, at first sight he seems like he might be homeless. His game is deadly: powerful, subtle, and methodical. On the court he is reserved and affable, but his moves and shots are sneaky fast. From his serves to kill shots, he plays as if not much is happening until his opponents realize that once again they have lost.
Tom’s demeanor, attire, and life experiences suggest a social activist, early baby boomer “hippie”
still committed to battles that must be fought again and again. Tom shuttles between the island and New York City every month or so. He is a retired US postal worker who is still committed to a neighborhood action group in West Harlem that has tangled with Columbia University and other predatory landlords for thirty years…
As the only white person at his job for most of his working life, Tom has been nurtured by the values, culture, and nuances of African American life. He is a prolific musician, poet, and painter, and his short stories blend city life and the flavor of Anna Maria Island with a genuine love for his wife’s people in the Dominican Republic. Multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-talented, Tom’s driving force is identification with others, a rich absorption of their passions combined with an outpouring of gruff love, devotion to his family, and his compelling case for due process for everyone everywhere.
Tom was once Guest Gringo player on a semi-pro Dominican basketball team. His stories and poems are anchored in Spanish passages that would lose authenticity in translation. While on the Island he swims in the ocean every day, hangs at Ginny and Jane D’s, sipping coffee with locals and snowbirds, and plays his tennis with the Legends intensely, quietly, and with panache.
Tom’s father taught at Amherst College and wrote a half dozen of the best books on American life and culture since Tocqueville. His dad’s Thinking Straight trilogy on race, gender, and class exposed an America at the mercy of theories of the Elect and “exceptionalism.” “I like to think I had a little influence on that one” he notes proudly about his father’s breakthrough text on class in American life…
Tom’s paintings tend to be abstract and take in the swirling rainbows of color in all our lives. His short stories are part poetry and part creative nonfiction and invite readers into worlds where people readily cross boundaries, make up new words, and devote their lives to new ways of practicing Buddhist loving kindness.
He brings wide-eyed expectancy to every unfolding moment where he is truly present to others. He is “one of those upon whom nothing is ever lost” to quote Henry James (that born tennis coach who missed his calling).
If Tom could pick one word to describe himself it would be “Frappy,” or the Spanish “chiflado” meaning to be playfully frantic and wildly happy. Tom’s art and music, his tennis and ocean swims, and his unflappable upbeat caring for people make him totally frappy.