My Friend Tad

PT Graduation 2001

I promise, this is Tad. If you could see only see his smiling face and hairy thighs (see below).

Tad was always there for a friend

As many of us have been doing this week, I have been relfecting about the life and times of our friend Tad. I first met Tad in Physical Therapy school at KU Med, and he was my friend from day one. But that is what Tad was to everyone he met. He always had an open heart and a huge smile for everyone who crossed his path. He had a goofiness and laugh that was contagious as well. He was always able to see the lighter side of things, but he also remained very vigilant with his studies, which was Tad's competitive side.....always striving to be the best. And trust me, we had some battles down in the low post playing basketball which would attribute to Tad's competitive side. But Tad was always gracious in victory or defeat, showing his selflessness.

After school, Tad was working as a traveling physical therapist in some po-dunk town in Illinois. Just the kind of free spirit thing that Tad was known for.....traveling, experiencing new people and places, and taking on new adventures. I was living nearby in St. Louis and he wanted to come visit. The weekend he wanted to visit was the weekend that I was moving into my first house. I had let him know the situation, and that it was OK if he wanted to come up another weekend. But as everyone knows who was lucky enough to meet Tad, he was always willing to help just to have some good company and a place to lie his head. The move was awful.....lugging all my possessions through some rain and smoldering humidity, and I never would have been able to do it by myself. Tad helped me all weekend, both packing my apartment up and unpacking at the new house. He added his "expertise" in what to keep and what to throw away.....we think he took some artistic licencse with this power, but that was our friend Tad. I think we just paid him in beer and a mattress on the floor, and yet he was happy to help. The above picture is only of the back of his head, but is still shows all the greatness that makes us love Tad. He is someone that when you reflect upon his life, makes you want to be a better person and live life to its fullest. Thanks Tad, you will be missed but never forgotten.

I would be remiss if I didn't lighten the mood a little bit.....it would be how Tad would have wanted it. During one of our lab classes in PT school, we had to practice massage. Everyone in the class was paired up. Our luck, Tad and I were paired together......one of the only male on male pairings....not our preference, especially for lower extremity massage. Needless to say, both of our hands ventured to regions neither of us were real comfortable with. It was a tentative massage at best from both of us, and we could barely control our laughter. I still remember Tad's hairy ass thighs to this day. I believe we told that story everytime we saw each other, and we died laughing everytime. Just yesterday, I had another hairy leg massage from a hamstring strain and I knew Tad was looking down on me, laughing his ass off. Thanks for the smiles and laughs Tad.