Losing a lifelong friend is very sad, but not all that shocking anymore

Life can be very strange.

Three weeks ago, I learned that one of my oldest and closest friends had an aneurysm in his brain rupture. I looked it up and saw that if he made it to the hospital, there was a pretty good chance of a full recovery or at least a partial one.

For the next two weeks I eagerly awaited the daily reports. At first they were hopeful, but after a while the doctors were disappointed that he wasn't showing more signs of recovery. They went back in for a second surgery and found there was more wrong than they had previously thought.

At that point, it was fairly obvious that he wasn't going to recover.

Tom Kensler, 1951-2016

Eight days ago, on July 22, 2016, my friend Tom Kensler died.

What's strange about that? I have three close friends that I have remained in contact with on a regular basis. I have others who have come in and out of my life for many years, but I'm not as familiar with the details of their lives.

But of my three close friends, one recently underwent surgery for throat cancer and the other has had so many medical problems he could star in training films for doctors.

The third was in pretty good health.

The third was Tom.

I don't think I'm insulting my friends when I say Tom was the best person of the four of us. So of course he was the one who died first.


I met Tom in September 1965 at the bus stop for the first day of school. He lived two blocks from me in our neighborhood in Fairfax, Va. I was starting my junior year of high school and he was a freshman. A couple of hours later, I found him and another freshman from our neighborhood lost in the halls of our massive high school.

We became friends, and for the next three years we played baseball, football and basketball after school, weekends and all day long in the summer. Tom's father was in the Air Force, and in 1969 he was transferred to Brussels.

The next time I saw Tom was six years later. He was in Virginia on a visit and he came by my apartment in Herndon to see me and to meet my first wife. After that, we kept in better touch.

He had studied city planning. In fact, he earned a masters degree in it. But when he started working in the field, he saw it didn't interest him that much.

He became a sportswriter, first in Pampa, Texas, and then at the Amarillo World-News in the Texas panhandle. By then I had started by own career, first in Alexandria, Va., and then at the Gastonia Gazette in North Carolina.

There was a point when it seemed as if we might get the chance to work together. Tom had moved on to the Daily Oklahoman, and when there was a vacancy in 1983, I applied for the job. In addition to Tom speaking for me, I had two different friend/mentors call the sports editor. Walt Masterson had pitched in the major leagues from 1939-57, and Jack Farnsworth was the owner of the minor league team I was covering in Gastonia.

Tom and Pam

Both men told me they thought I would get the job, but a hiring freeze intervened. While Tom stayed in Oklahoma, I moved on to South Carolina, St. Louis, Colorado and Nevada over the next five years. Tom came to visit me in 1989 in Reno, and there was sort of an ironic twist.

My boss was leaving for Denver to be sports editor of the Denver Post, and I introduced Tom to him. Tom got a job at the Post, and made the move to the city where he would spend the rest of his life.

Denver gave him nearly everything he ever wanted. A great job at an excellent paper that let him travel the world, a wonderful place to live and eventually, the love of his life. He would have been a great dad, and not having children was about the only thing that didn't happen for him.

But he and Pam had 13 wonderful years. The last time I saw him was in April 2013. He had been in Atlanta to cover the NCAA Final Four, and the morning after the championship game we agreed to meet in the lobby of his hotel and go to lunch together.

It was strange. We hadn't seen each other since the fall of 2001, when he had been in Los Angeles to cover a college football game. Both of us had aged and we looked different from our memories of each other. I kept glancing over at him and he kept glancing over at me. Finally, we took a chance and had a good laugh about it.

I talked about how proud I was of my kids and how worried I was about my wife's health. He talked about how happy he was and what a difference Pam had made in his life. I told him my golf game had improved a lot in the 15 years or so since the last time we played together, although I was still nowhere near his league.

We said goodbye. He left for the airport and I drove home.

Me, Tom & Mick Curran, 1998

There is no way either of us thought it would be the last time we would see each other. Heck, we were baby boomers. We were going to live forever.

There's one thing very ironic. In the 13 years Tom was married to Pam, I never met her. I'll meet her next Saturday when I fly to Denver for Tom's funeral. If I know one thing, it is that she will be a very special person. My friend loved her and she loved him. That's good enough for me.

I'll get to hear stories from Tom's colleagues and friends, and I'll probably tell a story or two myself. I'm pretty sure I will shed a few tears.

Most of the people I know have reached the age where life takes more away from us than it gives us.

Tom is the first of the friends I really loved to die.

We didn't see each other that often, but there was always the possibility that we would.

He was one of the two or three best people I knew. Never petty, mean or selfish. Always caring and generous.

I will miss him till the day I die.