{"id":1393,"date":"2010-02-04T10:13:31","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T16:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"1060185073"},"modified":"2010-02-04T10:13:31","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T16:13:31","slug":"remembering-tom-howard-and-a-life-well-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/remembering-tom-howard-and-a-life-well-lived\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Tom Howard and a Life Well-Lived"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"About four or five years ago I was invited into a group called Holy Smokes.\u00a0 It sounds great, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 And it was and has been.\u00a0 About 12 guys who do life together, we meet every week unless we are out of town; and we enjoy some fine cigars and read the Bible together.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been doing it week-in and week-out, year after year.\u00a0 These guys have become a part of my support system.\u00a0 So you can imagine how I felt last week when one of my BOB (Band of Brothers) died suddenly of a heart attack.<\/p>\n

His name is Tom Howard<\/strong>.\u00a0 Tom is a composer, arranger, writer, conductor, jack-of-all-trades here in the Nashville music scene.\u00a0 A quiet, simple, understated guy like a lot of creatives are; sensitive, thoughtful, insightful, and always gentle.\u00a0 And, I might add, way too hard on himself.\u00a0 Know anybody like that?<\/p>\n

When Tom passed away he was on a walk with his wife and friends last week at the age of 59.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to believe he is gone and he won\u2019t be there every Wednesday morning with a smiling face, with a gentle word, and his kind handshake.<\/p>\n

The one thing I know about Tom is, he always sold himself short.\u00a0 I find that a lot of really good people do that.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have an overestimation of themselves.\u00a0 Often times they are way too hard on themselves.\u00a0 Tom was one of those guys.\u00a0 One of the reasons I know that is what happened yesterday at his funeral.<\/p>\n

Tom was memorialized yesterday, on a Wednesday, in the afternoon, 2:00, at his church.\u00a0 And the place was packed.\u00a0 People were standing in the back and around the sides; hundreds and hundreds – I don\u2019t know what the final count would be – but I would say close to a thousand people were there, if not more.\u00a0 But here is my point.\u00a0 Any man who can draw that kind of crowd on a Wednesday afternoon in Nashville, Tennessee is a man who\u2019s impacted a lot of lives.<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just anyone, but it was the Who\u2019s Who of the music business in this city: both Country and Christian, both believer and, might I add, skeptic.\u00a0 It was a fit tribute to a life well-lived.\u00a0 Here is my question to you: If you were to die suddenly today of a heart attack and we were to bury you on a Wednesday afternoon, would anyone show up?\u00a0 Would we miss you?\u00a0 Would there be people who tell stories about your humor, your gentleness, your grace, your intelligence, your willingness to sacrifice for others, your selflessness? Or would people find out about your death through an email and think, \u201cOh well.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve made this determination while I\u2019m living, again, thanks to Tom Howard.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to spend my life making it as much as I possibly can, about others: loving them, serving them, building them up, being there for them, being selfless, putting my wife and children before my own pleasure, putting my friends before my own agenda so that when my days are over someone would be willing to inconvenience themselves on a Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 to come and say \u201cgood-bye.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too late to live a memorable life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About four or five years ago I was invited into a group called Holy Smokes.\u00a0 It sounds great, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 And it was and has been.\u00a0 About 12 guys who do life together, we meet every week unless we are out of town; and we enjoy some fine cigars and read the Bible together.\u00a0 We\u2019ve … Continue reading “Remembering Tom Howard and a Life Well-Lived”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}