How ironic that the last "Thursday Threesome" I filled out had the following question and my honest answer: Q. When you run up against an unexpected challenge, do you adapt and roll with it or scrap your original plan and go with Plan B? A. Where's Option C--hide until it goes away?

Which is why it’s taken me until now to acknowledge the loss of a friend.

We weren’t close friends of Tom Fuller. He wasn’t a frequent dinner guest or someone we visited often. We usually saw him at group gatherings, Bill Ritch’s New Year’s Eve bash, Atlanta Radio Theatre Company rehearsals back when we could still hack our way cross town during rush hour. And of course at ARTC performances. Tom was a grand performer. With his deep rumbling voice, he could portray everything from a villainous demon to a friendly department store Santa.

And he was the consummate storyteller. At parties, the thing to do was to sit down next to Tom and let him talk. We remember sitting nearby at one gathering as he waxed eloquent about the folly of writers who wrote about a certain culture or region without knowing about the area and/or doing much research. His example was a romance novelist whose heroine, a Southern belle, is about to make her debut. Our deb descends the graceful curving staircase, he described--with 12 magnolia blossoms in her hair. If the poor girl’s visual impairment predicament wasn’t funny enough to his already laughing audience, Tom added the capper with a dry, “Her mamma didn’t like her very much.”

Thomas’ crowning achievement was his writing. He wrote adult fantasy, horror, children’s stories, poetry, and radio drama all with consummate skill. I suppose given the chance I would have sold my soul to the devil to write like Thomas Fuller. Still, what I will miss most is his presence and his voice, and the wonderful tales he told while just sitting around with friends.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:18:00 PM

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