On March 12, 2024, Tom Saving died in St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. He chose potentially fatal surgeries to get blood to portions of his digestive system and to erase a blockage. The last straw was kidney failure, though a complex set of problems overcame his body.
Judy and I visited with him on Sunday, March 10. He had little remaining energy and spoke in a low volume. He could barely move the hand that was not hooked up to i v fluids. My experience with my father made me think Tom would likely not live through the week. Judy gave him some needed positive feedback. I took him a Monet book, but I doubt he saw it, as he could not hold a book. After he died, his wife, Barbara, wrote that Monet was one of his favorites and hers, too.
Ever since my early 20’s, Dr. Thomas R. Saving has been an important part of my life. At the outset I knew he was brilliant in economics. In his advanced course in macroeconomics, he derived intricate relationships on the blackboard. I asked one day after class if there was a book or an article I could get that had that work in it. He said, “No, I am deriving it during the class.”
When Tom and Barbara traveled, I would babysit for them. They always supplied steaks, a rarity for a graduate student.
Tom helped me out in unusual ways. When I went to the American Economic Association meetings in Detroit, Michigan in January of 1970, Tom loaned me a winter coat. Being from Kingsville, TX I did not own one.
Upon completion of my Ph.D. exams, I asked Tom if he would be my dissertation chairman. When he agreed, and I told him my dissertation topic, he said, “You won’t be able to do that.” I thought, “Sure I will.” I also accepted a job in A&M’s math department teaching three courses. Tom said, “You will not be able to get your dissertation done with that teaching load.” He was correct on both counts. After four months I showed up at his office and asked if he had a suggestion for a dissertation topic. He proposed one related to work he was doing.
When I made sufficient progress on my dissertation, I left a copy of my work with him. When I returned to his office to discuss it, my papers would be buried in the pile on his desk. He would say, “Tell me what you did.” Since I knew I would eventually need his confirmation of my written analysis, I needed a way to isolate my work from his other papers. I bought a large rural mailbox, painted it in a gaudy way no one could possibly overlook, and when he was out of his office, I placed it on a credenza behind his desk. Inside the box was a note,
“If the flag is raised, there is new information to read. Once read, please lower the flag.
Yours truly, Clifford Fry”
One day Tom received a call from Washington State University’s economics department asking if he had any students they might hire. The timing was right for me, and in September 1971 I went to Pullman, WA as a visiting assistant professor. I taught graduate courses, made a life-long friend, Lane Rawlins, and I completed my dissertation there in December 1971.
In the 1980’s, when I was head of the Department of Finance at the University of Houston, I received requests from local lawyers to be an expert witness. For “big money” complex cases I recommended the attorneys contact RRC, Inc. a consulting firm that Tom had started. He was a co-owner with Don House, who graduated with a Ph.D. a year or two behind me at Texas A&M.
After peripherally working with RRC, Inc. over the years, I received a call from Tom in the early 1990’s. He asked if I would be interested in buying his stock in RRC, Inc. This was a once-in-a-lifetime offer. Judy and I knew Ashley’s Rett Syndrome difficulties were not going to be overcome anytime soon, and maybe never. I needed to financially provide for her. Nevertheless, while the offer had a financial upside, it had a downside, too. I was not sure I could do that high level type of consulting work sufficiently to support myself and help Don support the employees of RRC, Inc. I traveled to College Station for several days each week for a year and a half before I made the transition. I resigned my tenured position at the University of Houston, and my family moved to College Station.
After living in College Station for a while, Tom told Judy and I that a nice house next to his was up for sale, and we bought it. I bought Tom’s stock in January 1994 on credit extended by Tom. Tom handed me the keys and went back to Texas A&M full-time to head the Private Enterprise Research Center. I paid on the debt regularly, owning the stock after several years.
For 20 years, I provided expert witness work in large commercial lawsuits, such as working with the lawyers for Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I consulted on several large projects, like one for Alcoa in Rockdale, TX. I sold my stock to Don in 2011 and continued consulting until September 2013, when I joined Texas A&M’s Institute for Advanced Study as Associate Director.
My association with Tom continued, sometime meeting for lunch or at gatherings at his ranch about 15 miles south of College Station. For the last few years, I have joined a Saturday morning gathering at Don’s for coffee and doughnuts that Tom and Barbara regularly attended.
Since 2002, Judy and I have lived in a house with a large, detached garage that contains my former band’s music equipment and sound system. I have had many jam sessions there over the years on Sunday afternoons with band members and musicians from College Station, and Tom and Barbara Saving were regular attendees. They also joined the musicians for lunch at Rudy’s barbeque prior to the jam sessions. The picture with me and Tom was taken at one of the last jam sessions he attended. It will be strange not seeing Tom at these gatherings.
Tom was a generous, brilliant, and humble man. He never talked about his accomplishments, and yet they were many. Economists knew better than to compare themselves professionally with Tom Saving. If you did, you were going to come out on the short end.
Thank you, Tom, for your inspiration, your mentorship, your friendship, and for the opportunities you provided for me. I am a better man for knowing you.
Please read Texas A&M University’s tribute to him.
https://artsci.tamu.edu/news/2024/03/texas-aandm-mourns-loss-of-distinguished-professor-emeritus-thomas-saving.html
Goodby, Tom. I miss you.
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