cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, and Maxine Shirts.
"About 10:00 PM Friday, 15 February 2002, Gary Jones was called out as a Paramedic on a 911 call from Katy that a 52 year old white male on Emerald Green Lane had had a heart attack. About 12:00 Gary knocked on our door to tell me that our neighbor, Tommy Kroll, had had a heart attack earlier in the evening, had died, and his wife Carolyn was taking it very, very hard. Gary just thought I'd like to know. At choir practice the next morning, last Saturday, the day before this Thoughtlet was scheduled to be written, Gary mentioned in passing how all the way over to Emerald Green in the ambulance he thought it was a 52 year old white male that lived next to the deceased at 1307 Emerald Green Lane. We never know when it is out turn to step through the veil, greet our departed loved ones, and start the next exciting phase of our metamorphosis to:
Or as expanded upon a few years later in the Book of Mormon,
following Christ's death and resurrection:
I didn't know Tommy Kroll. Shortly after he moved in, he gave
me a lecture about the swamp cooler in the greenhouse, and
said if I didn't get it fixed he was going to sue me to fix
his driveway. He was sure his driveway was going to crack
because of water leaking out of the greenhouse swamp cooler.
We said hi to each other in the yard, and after the earlier
exchange, I made no special efforts to get close to Tommy nor
his family. I knew they have a son and a daughter Ben's age.
I knew he did field operations on the Brookshire Dome. And
I didn't think there was much other interaction with me nor
my family. I have sense learned otherwise, and will write
about Tommy's example in the next Thoughtlet (0208.html).
This Thoughtlet is a week late because the main system disk on the web server died on Wednesday, 13 February 2002, and it took until yesterday to get it fixed (resurrected) and everything back working again. The Sparc 10 that has been the Hypermedia and now Walden 3-D web server since about 1993 was a faithful companion and a good servant. And like Tommy Kroll's body, it gave up and went the way of all things of the world. The difference, of course, is that Tommy was a human being. A man with hopes, dreams, ambitions, goals, kids, a job, and all of the other things that go with being a human being. And I feel bad I did not make the effort to know him better. I was always impressed with how nice his yard looked, and he seemed to be a very personable guy. Unlike my Sparc 10, Tommy had the spark of life, and I simply missed out on having his spark touch me because I was too busy, or there were other things which kept us from crossing paths.
Saturday morning Andrea baked two loaves of fruit bread, and we took them over to Carolyn after Choir Practice on Saturday morning. She greeted me as Roice, like we were long lost friends, and we had a 30 minute conversation. She seemed to be doing pretty good, and was obviously touched by the two loaves of warm bread. Carolyn's daughter was in New York. She happened to have a friend staying over with her, who was able to support and comfort her when her Mom gave her the news. She was very close to Tommy. Carolyn's son was in Rio de Janerio, and it took him until Tuesday to make it back to San Antonio for the funeral. They had a family plot in the little town cemetary where they are both from about 40 miles south of San Antonio. I had appointments and could not take a day off to drive over to the funeral. Oh well! Carolyn mentioned she wanted you kids to know about Tommy's death. I had no idea why Carolyn expressed this desire at the time. Guess I have always been very naive about what is going on around me. We took in Carolyn's paper each morning, Andrea collected the mail, and folks left flowers with us to take to them.
As far a the rest of my week? Well, it was better than having a heart attack. Monday Christian Singfield and I had dinner with Chuck Edwards at Steak and Ale east of Kirkwood on the I-10 frontage road. Chuck is very interested in and catches the vision of Christian's core and cuttings scanning technologies. I'm optimistic there is a future here in this TMI (Technology of Mutual Interest). Tuesday Jim Hurn took me downtown to meet Tommy Carter of Black Stone Minerals Company. They own 4 million acres of mineral leases, have 3-D seismic over a lot of acreage, and have two people to work it all up. In the evening, Christian, Chuck, and I had dinner with a CDX Vice-President to discuss Christian's technology. He asked us for a business plan. I put one together on Wednesday, and Christian and I polished it up Wednesday evening while everyone else was at Young Men/ Young Women Activities. Thursday morning I delivered the business plan to Chuck and we spent an hour discussing Digital Rocks, LLC. We asked for $1.5 million. Chuck was receptive. I went from there to the delayed follow-up meeting with Santos. They are very interested. We had a nice lunch at Nara Japanese Resturant, and there is a soft commitment to tie something together by the last week of the month.
Friday was spent with Alf Klaviness in Brookshire. I had a tour of the Brookshire dome field. It is very interesting if any of you want to see it sometime when you visit or have time. Then we met with a friend who has a large machine shop and is going to build Alf's pulsar for his downhole seismic tool. We ate lunch at a barbeque place in Sealy, which was good, and yet I'm sure is nothing compared to Wright's barbeque. Then Alf drove us out to New Ulm and I introduced him to Ken Turner's art. It was the first time I have seen the painting called `Out of the Ashes,' about the heros of the New York Terrorist attack. Neat painting. It is just about finished, and it motivated me to learn about using the new hgol.net web site editing tools and getting ready for the introduction of prints of this painting. Friday night was the bi-ward Valentine's dance, which the Midlife Crisis played at. Fun evening. However, there were only about 12 folks from Nottingham Country Ward in attendance. I don't feel like I'm cut out to be a very good Activities Committee Chairman. Oh well!
I've already talked about Tommy Kroll and Friday night and Saturday morning. Saturday Matt was at a camporee at Camp Strake. I spent the day working on web sites so folks can select an area to apply the Lead Generation Machine to, and then pay with Credit Card. In fact, I spent all week working on this same thing, and we almost have the associated web sites ready for primetime (see www.walden3d.com/dynamic/counties). Sunday Matt didn't want to go Home Teaching, so we have been trying to visit all four of our families today. I spent the day reading a book called `Bone Hunter.' a mystery featuring forensic geologist Em Hansen from Denver, and her trip among the fundamentalists between Salt Lake and Castle Dale.
Considering the depth of the change next door, with the death of Tommy Kroll, it was a pretty quiet week. Hope you each had a good week."