Harvey K. Tomlinson

Amazon lost a loyal shopper 30 December 2020.  Harvey K Tomlinson, “Butch”, said God was in charge, but I’m not sure God knew Dad gave up that kind of control.  They got to talk it out face to early that morning, though.  Dad liked to start his day early.  No sense in making Management wait.

He was born to Catherine Warren and the late Harvey H. Tomlinson 01 August 1957 and ended his incredibly full 63 years after spending the last nearly 2.5 of them battling cancer.  But he wasn’t alone.  He had a lot of people helping him.  We even had an Army Ranger.  Dad said you could always count on the Rangers.

He married Yi Suk Chong in 1980 on 22 August in Seoul, Korea.  According to the story, he never technically proposed, he just offered to bring her to the States to visit her friend.  However, a trip to the consulate, 3 kids, and 40 years later, I think mom knew what was up. That and he did propose after the invite to the States.

Either way, he was blessed with all girls: Catherine, Debra, and Theresa.  As the oldest of 4, Dad was the only one to have girls.  His sisters and brother all have boys.  But Dad stepped up to the challenge: he did our hair, let us do his, talked to the boyfriends, became a Girl Scout leader.  He even bought magnetic eyelashes for Christmas.  The one thing we weren’t allowed to do was paint his nails.  It was a point of contention.

Rest assured, this was one Airman who never knew how awesome it was to have fabulous nails.  I’d say we would have made his toes match, but that would be a lie.

Dad gave 22 regulation standard years to the United States Air Force as a Security Forces Specialist.  But that hardly covers even a fraction of what he did.  He was a recruiter, heavy weapons specialist, a training instructor, and an antiterrorism force protection specialist.  And that still doesn’t tell you what he did.  He had all these stories – some of them were funny and some of them were not.  I know he edited them to make them safer and less scary for the retelling, but liked the funny ones. 

He was such a good flight sergeant and training instructor.  He made sure his squadron received the best training possible so they were prepared for anything.  If he said he knew a thing, he knew it, backwards and forwards.  And if you counted him, it didn’t matter who you were.  

There was one time he outright refused a direct order from the base commander.  Turns out, he was the only one who seemed to know that a certain gate needed to remain closed, except for real world application.  Inspections did not count, so dad told the inspector no, who complained to the commander, who also got a no from dad.  And dad knew he was right.  It saved the base.  After they realized dad knowing proper procedure meant the base didn’t lose its nuclear permissions, they offered him whatever job he wanted.  Which was to be in charge of training for the whole squadron.  

That’s how he was.  He didn’t want or need any accolades.  During the course of his career, the military gave him so many medals and ribbons, I can’t begin to tell you what they were for.  I’d find medals stuffed unceremoniously into drawers or tucked behind books on shelves or just packed away, like they were nothing of note.  When I asked, he knew what they were and why they were awarded.  There was one crazy story about saving someone’s life.  But it was no big deal to him.  Because who wouldn’t, if they could, if they had the power, the ability to do so?  But though he celebrated it in others, he never recognized the extraordinary in himself.  So while nice, the medal wasn’t terribly significant to him.  It was just a Tuesday.  My dad was that amazing.  He was always thinking about other people.  Always the first one in, always the last one out. 

He’d always go out in the middle of the night to check on night shift to make sure they were ok.  He donated his time and his money.  Sandbagged homes during a flood in Turkey and delivered coffee and sandwiches to the other volunteers.  He invited his squadron into his home for the holidays and took special care to make sure the kids away from home for the first time had food and family to celebrate with and weren’t alone.  I’ve never seen a turkey decimated so fast.

Family was really important to Dad, and he took us almost everywhere with him.  The military afforded him the opportunity to travel, so he lived extensively in Korea, Iceland, Germany, and Turkey, not to mention Philadelphia and Washington state.  He was also sent on short tours to places like the Philippines and Kuwait, to name just a few he was allowed to tell us about.  Home is where the Air Force sends you, but mostly where we all got to be together.  Except Minot.  They kept trying to send him there and he accepted another assignment in Iceland before the place became a popular tourist spot to avoid that particular gem of North Dakota.  They lost their chance when he retired out of MacDill, AFB in Florida.  His last big project there was to fortify the base, especially the gate protections, right before 9/11.

After he retired, he started a second career as an education and taught Hillsborough County students from 2001 to 2017.  He started with IB Psychology at Hillsborough High School and then taught 8th grade Science at Guinta, Progressive Village Middle Magnet, and Sligh Middle Schools.  He started a robotics club for his students, stayed late tutoring, bought a Wal-Mart’s warehouse worth of school supplies, ordered a franchise’s annual inventory of pizza, and initiated and ran Science Nights where he planted the seed for a love of anything and everything science related in students who would normally not give the subject a second thought.  The energy he gave the military as a young man, he also gave to his students.  He borrowed some of that energy from his own children, but watching a student’s eyes light up when they told him they used to hate science but loved it now because of him was sustaining.  He would find renewed strength from that, and from watching his student’s get excited when their experiments went well, or when the really dug into class discussions.  Teaching is not easy and his military background gave him an edge that worked well with students that wanted to test him (à la Dangerous Minds, except not really – he mostly taught eight graders – though some of those kids…).  He relished the challenge and usually came out on top.

After he retired for real, he tried his hand at gardening.  He had tried his hand at tomatoes a few times before and failed in every way possible but he had never done raised garden beds, so why not?  He liked working in the garage and it was a fun excuse to spend time with his kids, too, so he made some (9) raised beds.  Turns out, to make tomatoes, you just need to be retired!  Good thing he liked them, because his little backyard garden was extensive and grew to include cherry tomatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots, sesame, bell peppers of every color, hot peppers of every tolerance, Korean eggplant, potatoes, lettuce, Korean sweet potatoes, sesame, you name it.  And he gave the fruits of his labor away to anyone and everyone, including slips and seeds and advice for others to start their own gardens.  If you got a sweet potato slip, they have probably taken over your yard.  He’s not sorry about that.  And I think more than once, he almost lost Mom to the cherry tomato jungle and had to rescue her from the vines.  He could even grow the things that shouldn’t be able to grow in Florida’s unforgiving weather, but on the flip side, he couldn’t bear to thin out his carrot seedlings.  It turned out perfect, because they stayed small, which were perfect for dip.  Dad was so smart.

His garden boxes were the first foray into amateur carpentry and he decided to make a potting bench for seedlings and a wash station for the vegetables.  We all have book shelves and wall shelves and tool benches and inspirational decorative signs and wall racks and patio furniture he made for us over the years, too.  That doesn’t count the little things like the crosses he made for the church and for his fellow Veterans at the VA hospital.  His next big project was to make living room furniture.  He has tasked us with making sure it happens, even without him here to make sure we measure correctly.  The scariest part of all of this endeavor is that someone is going to have to unplug the tangle of wires he has somehow magicked into working with the Bluetooth surround sound, cable box, DVD player, VHS, tuner thing, and whatever else he’s got in the entertainment center.  There was a working Betamax in it until recently, and it was only moved to make space.  Oh, and because no one has made those recorders since 2002!

He loved spending time in his pool with his family and grilling for them (and passing his secrets on to his grill buddy).  He built and raced RC car and crashed more drones than we could count.  He was a phenomenal cook and never made the same thing twice, mostly because he never used a recipe and couldn’t exactly replicate a meal if he tried.  No one ever made a fresher salsa than Daddy’s Garden Salsa because he grew everything that went into it.  He even pickled his own pickles for Mom because store bought wasn’t hot enough for her.  He built rockets with his kids and knocked on doors so we could retrieve them from people’s roofs, not counting the one I swear we sent to space.  It’s probably still in orbit and confusing NASA to this day.  He made candles and chocolate candies and jam.  And it was always to give as gifts.  He was even a rescue diver for fun.  When we lived in Germany, he would take the family out on volksmarches, and we’d be eating potato cakes and bratwurst the whole way.  No volksmarches here in Florida, but the dog got plenty of walks, even when she didn’t want to go.  

He also was pretty big into the church.  He was a long-time member of St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church in Brandon and supplemented his hobbies with volunteer work.  He volunteered for Andy’s Angels, who delivered food for families in emergency situations.  He also volunteered for the I Hope Café and traveled from church to church feeding the homeless.  He was a vacation bible school teacher for the church, too.  And he volunteered at the Falkenburg Animal Resource Center.  God and strays.  Dad always knew where best to point his heart.

I’ve got 3 pages and I still haven’t really painted a good picture of my dad.  He loved his family.  And he never realized how cool he was or just how much he touched other people.  All he wanted to do was help.  Always service.  He jumped out of planes and survived helicopter crashes.  He prayed in trenches that he would get to see his family again while reminding the guy next to him where his atropine dose was kept.  And his great joy was staining garden boxes and showing his kids how to make pocket holes with a kreg jig.  Relaxing in his pool with a glass of Mom’s iced tea.  Driving the dog crazy with her electric bone.  Talking to his students about anything science.  Experiments going right.  He was in a war zone in the desert and his big concern was sending his kids Kinder Eggs from Germany.  And he did it.  That was my dad.  Everyone says their dad is the best, but my dad was.

He blew up science experiments in Mom’s kitchen and he took us school shopping every year.  He always bought us the fancy pens and pencils.  He loved Christmas and made it a huge celebration.  He called sawdust man glitter and he ate raw potato slices with salt like a madman.  He made seafood for Mom, but didn’t eat it himself, and he learned early in their marriage that Uncle Ben’s isn’t real rice.  He loved pudding skin and chicken skin and he could tell you what growing zone you were in for optimal garden planning (we are zone 9, in case you are curious).  He loved my mom and his biggest and most constant concern about dying (other than leaving her) was making sure she was taken care of.  He loved me and my sisters and we all know who his favorite was.  It was Eve.  Eve is the dog.  And she’s a jerk, but she was his constant companion after he was first diagnosed.  I learned so much from him, but there was so much more to learn and now he’s not talking.  I don’t know why I can’t light the grill with any consistency, but I will never forget to cut the tops of the peppers off when I make my own pickles, even if he didn’t say to do it in his recipe.  My garden will never produce like his does, but I will keep trying.  At least I’ll always have sweet potatoes.  

He wanted to be cremated so we did that for him, and I got the coffee cans he wanted off of Amazon (sorry Bezos, you will see less activity on my account, now.  I hope you remember the last 2 years fondly).  Did I mention coffee would be provided after the service?  I hope Chock full o’Nuts is a good brand…