So Long, Tom

One afternoon, in the offices of Young & Ross Advertising, I noticed that Tom Huntley was wearing mismatched cufflinks.  "Tom," I said, "you have a different cufflink on each sleeve." "That's right," he said, "and I have another pair at home just like them."

By this time we had known each other for a dozen years, since meeting in the studios of radio station CKNW.  Tom was a salesman, I was a writer, and I had written a series of commercials in which Tom and Jim Mantell played a Wodehousian pair dubbed Cholmondoley and Smythe.

We often made client calls together, and one of Tom's remarkable tricks was to sketch while talking.  He would have a pad in his lap, and while he looked straight ahead at the prospective client, the pencil in his hand would keep moving.  At the end of his pitch, Tom would say "And the design for the campaign might look something like this," and hold up whatever he had been drawing.

One of the campaigns we worked on was a radio series for a pepper grinder.  Tom said to me, "Malkin's Table Pepper Shaker--cha cha cha!"  The commercial, based on that line, won an International Broadcasting Award, presented by the Hollywood Advertising Club.  Another product to get Tom's touch was jam--Malkin's Fresh-Packed Strawberry Jam.  "Oh, what a jam to be in!" chorused Tom.  The wonderful Eleanor Collins and her then young children sang the commercial's lyrics.

Tom was a remarkably facile artist, but he had other enthusiasms, primarily the church and golf, the order depending on the day.  He also had a flair with a Martini shaker.  Unafraid of challenges--in fact, invigorated by them--he took on the task of carving from wood a life-size statue of Jesus as Christ the King,  for a parish of that name.  It was Tom's first foray into wood carving, but the result was majestic and overwhelming.  (After some decades, the wall behind the altar where the 300-pound carving was mounted began to sway, and the rector worried that she would become known as "the priest who was squashed by Jesus.")  

Walking to Tom's memorial service--held, appropriately, at a golf club--I reflected that I have almost as many friends in the great hereafter as I have still functioning on this planet.  (Two of those friends made their exit in the midst of telling a joke.  To their credit, the people around didn't bend down and cry, "Quick!  Give us the punch line!")

Well, I thought, at least when I arrive, they'll have the Martini glasses chilled.  And Tom will be wearing his mismatched cufflinks.