Hi Mrs Kennedy, What a marvelous son you raised!
My name is Faith Kidder and I first met Tom , Haideen, and Mike, when they arrived literally on my door strp last July in their Missile Truck ( see attached pictures. My friend Mary Jane had been telling me about the Missile dick chicks but I had thought perhaps a little tawdry for an over 50 Grandmother. Their enthusiasm and enlightened and we are all friends approach was just what I needed when preparing for the Republican national convention. I was soon smitten with the whole crew.
I remember waiting for the bus and truck to arrive for the liberty parade. They had been pulled over by the police. So Many people would have taken it as a challenge or a threat. Tom and Haideen’s approach was everyone is our friend. I remember Mike raising his eye brows in amazement as he talked about Tom negotiating with the police. Can you just see Tom one hand on their shoulder lowering his body so he can look them in the eye. The result was their truck with an apparent Missile on it’s flat bed was allowed into the RED zone around the republican convention hall where mostly only police and RNC delegate buses were allowed.
I also remember Tom and Mike gallantly walking me to my car after the RNC march as I was still dressed as a Missile dick chick and was a little uncomfortable flying solo. Chivalry was quite alive with them. It is funny since I only met Tom this last year and I only got to see him in snippets. But I can still feel his presence in a way that is some what amazing, Humility, solid as a rock, look you in the eye, and yet that Michelangelo thing of seeing what something can be ( possibility) .
I saw him last in February when he came out for the art car parade on Ice.
Last Saturday a Priority package came in the mail. It was a book replete with photographs about his trip here to Minnesota last summer. In the genre of what I did on my summer vacation.
My experience was that Tom made the world not only a more happy and loving place but a place of beauty and one where people were readily supported to do outrageous acts of fun.
Thank you for allowing me to share my story, my condolences and my gratitude for having had a chance to meet him and get to know him.
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“Democracy assumes there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people”
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Faith Kidder
