Last week I was very sad to learn one of my mentors and favorite people Tom Williams had died . I’ve known and worked with Tom four nearly 30 years… No more I think about it it’s probably closer to 40. He was a bigger than life person… Brilliant, funny, adventurous… And super kind. He was one of the worlds foremost experts on the testing VLSI chips… He Coinvented level sensitive scan design (LSSD) that has been used by chip makers all over the world.… tom Spent large part of his career and IBM was the senior test guy in the whole company… Eventually left and became a fellow at synopsis. Tom was very well-known industry and served on many IEEE boards.… he got a lot of recognition including recently the Coffman award… Which is the highest award for someone in electronic design automation. He was always flying somewhere in the world to gift tax meet new people etc.… He was Such a role model technical skill and give back for me and for so many others
Tom was the biggest extrovert I have ever met… And that’s saying something. You would walk into a room with Tom and He would Either already know everyone in the room … Or he would get to know them before he left . Not only that but he remembered and could tell you about their jobs their interests, their kids… It was really amazing the guy had the biggest Rolodex in his mind that I have ever seen. And he truly loved people !
Tom Was an fantasric mentor… I truly cannot count the number of times I’ve run into him at some city in the world and we sat down for a good meal… Usually Italian… With good wine… Usually Amarone…. An eaten good food generally ..no make that always… Covered with garlic. He was always so generous with his time, energy and expertise… I remember right before Sam died Tom and his wonderful wife Candace Lent us there condo in Canmore Canada… It was such a wonderful gesture…
What made Tom such a great mentor is that he would give you really straight advice… He more than anyone helped me professionally corral all my energy and make sure that Even though I was having fun I needed tocontinue to patent and write papers… whenever I saw them he would ask me about papers and patents… Almost like a parent.… Will it work out very well for me. I remember Tom was the guy who cut me elected to the IBM Academy… A group inside IBM that was has been very important to my technical and social groups.… In a matter of fact when I got into the national Academy a couple of weeks ago I made a mental note that I had to reach out to Thom to tell him… He would’ve been quite proud… But sadly I never got a chance to do that
Tom was a friend and mentor to so many people in our industry… When I heard he died I started reaching out to old friends and they all have the same sort of stories and feelings about time that I do. I took it upon myself tonight to put together as many of toms friends from IBM. Like many things in the past couple years we decided that virtual was better… But that also allowed us to pull in friends from all over.… At 8 o’clock tonight we gathered by zoom to toast our friend and mentor. We each had our own bottle of fancy wine… I have managed to find a bottle of aMarone at a local liquor store… And we all had garlic of one form or another.
I didn’t really keep count but we had at least 20 people on there many my thoughts decades. It was very touching to hear all of the stories we shared… It was remarkable even though each of our relationships With Tom were unique… The overall story was the same… Great technical magic with amazing humanity. We swap stories and toasted him for nearly 2 hours… We had a lot of fun telling Tom stories… He was notoriously bad at spelling… Quite mischievous… And damn hard to manage.… (in other words A man after my own heart!)
It was so wonderful to be together even for such a sad occasion
I recorded the meeting so that if anyone out there is a friend of Toms and would like to see it please let me know
After we hung up I had a good long cry… Hadn’t done that in a long time.
I left them call feeling pretty good… I’m feeling very committed to try to be the kind of mentor time was to me there’s many other people as I could… If we all would pay that forward the worlds be a pretty good place
Hey Tom You are loved and missed ..
Nite all, nite sam
-me
