Notre Dame - Tom and Mike on the 50My next summer of thanks goes out to my friend Tom Teitgen.  Tom is my friend that I can talk to for hours and disagree with the entire time and find that I enjoyed the conversation.  Tom likes to argue.  I like to argue.  It makes for great theater.

Tom’s family is important to my family; my wife and Tom’s wife, Barb, are friends.  They are members of the ’58s friend group that all of us were born in 1958; so we hit our birthday milestones the same year.   I taught one of their kids, Katie, and both Katie and Jake were great Camp Tecumseh counselors for my school.

There is a side to Tom that is more important to me.  When Ally was in elementary school there was a day for grandparents to come to class; we do not have any family close by so Tom and Barb went as Ally’s “grandparents”; it meant so much to Ally, it meant just as much to me.  Tom has an unselfishness to him; he has taken the time to help my resurrect Laurel’s computer more times than I can count, on his own he went out to our house when it was under construction every Saturday to walk around and make sure everything looked right, we wired the house with extra phone jacks, he was my “engineer” opinion on everything, and so much more.

Tom’s generosity has allowed our family to vacation in Florida three times at his family condo, he took me to see a football game at Notre Dame, and most of all he has been my friend.