Tom Whittemore passed away in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. He'd
been sick for a long time, getting sicker, mostly as complications of his
diabetes. We haven't had a message to the group about this; the news has
been passing around since very early yesterday, but I wanted to make sure
everyone in the group heard.
For those who didn't know him, Tom was a founding board member of R-SPEC,
and an old D-309er from way back. A lot of us knew Tom, some of us very
well; I can't count myself in the latter category, but I liked and
respected him very much. When I first met him through R-SPEC, he struck me
quickly as a person of keen insight, and nowhere more so than where story
structure is concerned. And he could be blunt, but was seldom rude. Anyone
who's had him read their work has probably heard him say something like,
"that's a really nice scene but it serves absolutely no purpose there. I
think you should cut it." And he'd usually be right. In our writing group,
we started recording our stories for his benefit (for some time, his vision
has been prohibitively poor for long form reading), and we all found the
exercise useful as it forced us to hear the work in new ways.
Someone will post a note here & on Facebook when we know more about his
memorial service, which will probably be this weekend, possibly at Alex
White's shop on Monroe Avenue ('Boldo's Armory'), near the loop.
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eric scoles | [email protected]
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