TOM: So as you watch Will, my older brother, and I raise three kids each, what do you think the biggest difference is between challenges we face and challenges that you faced when you were doing the same thing?
DAD: I don’t know the inside story for either of you fully. I have a broad external sense. One difference, I think, is available resources. You both have positions and family incomes that are not at the level of month to month, eking it out as we were in Amherst. I was borrowing regularly from my mother to help make sure we met the bills and that’s why losing the job felt like going off a cliff. So I think in both of your households there’s a sense of a sufficiency in resources that eases off that anxiety.
TOM: As a grandfather to the six children, what’s the legacy that you want to pass on?
DAD: Oh, that’s hard. I would hope to pass on or have them come into a safer, greener, more just society and a more peaceful world, but how that plays out and what can be done to move in that direction is the continuing effort Jean and I try to figure out as to where we apply our energies at this stage of our lives.
TOM: Do you have a memory of the two of us together that sticks in your mind?
DAD: A really beautiful day that I remember with great joy is when you’re probably a bit older than kindergarten. We went to some ridgeline outside Ithaca, up on a high, rolling hilltop on a clear, windy day and had kites and we got a couple of kites up—I don’t know, five, 600 feet. They just went up so you could hardly see them and I just remember that as a day of a lot of excitement and pleasure and that you had a kite way, way up there. You had the long hair—long, loose hair blowing in the wind.
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Excellent interview, Tom. I am very glad that you were able to sit down and connect with your father like this. As much as we think we know our dads at times, there is always more to the story—small (or in your case, large) details that would have gone otherwise untold unless you spend quality talk time.
I enjoyed this. You both are good men.
What an interesting guy your dad is, Tom!.
One of the striking things that comes through this conversation is that despite your returning to the father/son theme over and over, in so many instances that you and your dad address the fathers were not present, or the men were not in family situations etc. Makes it clear how major a shift your generation is in the midst of, and how timely your focus is!
Thanks for showing open interest in your son’s cause, Jean Matlack, in your comment here and your own interview in May. Discovering his TGMP work is one of the best things that’s happened for me in the past few months. It does my heart good to see Tom honoring his father and mother while finding his own way!
Tom, It took me a couple year’s after my Father Passed away in September of 1999, to understand who he was but more importantly The man I thought I had to be…
I think our Fathers, seem so Hero like as children in our eye’s! As we age and mature, They have exspectation’s and we tend to think or believe what they want for us, is Not in our plan’s. So we fighnt it every step along the way.
Tom, My Dad many times through out my childhood made me feel WEAK and Unexcepted! Growing up My eye’s saw his true streagth! I feared his streagth’s and he taught me that this was RESPECT… Sadly year’s after his Death I understood RESPECT in my understanding was not the true meaning. My Respect was out of Fear! That took me awhile too fully understand this Impact in my life.
This is what I do and Have alway’s known of my Father! He relentlessly worked Hard for my Brother’s and my Sister’s! Nothing Came easy and This to the very end is what I had questioned in my own life after he passed away! His Legacy in my eye’s has a diffrent meaning now than before 2002. I am so-proud to say I am his son and His hand’s and hard work in life is the most Important to me. I love him and Yes I maybe diffrent than him on many level’s both as a Father and a Man. I have found we all take alittle bit from each person that we saw Influenced our live’s. Then as we Mature, All those Little thing’s mold us into the men we are! Thank You. Rick Poplar Bluff, Missouri.