My mother lost her husband -- and his children lost their father -- suddenly, when he was just 52 years old.
The shock of that loss was absolute. The pain, incalculable. The repercussions, unimaginable.
Not a day has passed, since then, when any of us hasn't had at least a fleeting thought of him -- of how he was, and of how he might be, and of how the world has changed in ways that would have astonished him, 42 years later.
We have always taken whatever comfort we could from the knowledge that he lived a good life, touching many in ways beneficial to them, and that he and our mother made good lives possible for all of us. I don't think my mother ever presided over a gathering of our family without looking skyward and saying "Thank you, Bill" -- or words to that effect.
I will say a little prayer that Tom MacWood's family will find some comfort in all of the words we are writing here -- and in the knowledge that he will be sorely missed by many people he never knew.
I did not know the man. We did not correspond. He took this subject way more seriously than I do; he was a scholar of golf-course architecture, and I am decidedly not. But my friend Rick Shefchik nailed it, when he called Tom MacWood a "pillar" of golfclubatlas.com.
And as for me, I try never to forget the words of John Donne:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
Dan