Three Long and Too Short

Tom Qualley

Description

An engrossing memoir of a young boy growing up in a very rural environment of northern Minnesota without friends in a home with a physically and psychologically abusive father and mercilessly abused mother. Despite being ostracized in school and told he wasn’t college material, Tom graduated with academic honors from a highly ranked private university and went on to become a nationally recognized marketer with major Fortune 500 companies. Despite his success, he was clinically depressed from childhood until well into his forties. Only after two years of psychiatric therapy (and a lot of advice from the late actress Betty White) did he begin believing in himself.
Little is left to the imagination as he recaps the harrowing experience of having a loaded rifle pointed at him by his father. He shares details of one of the most horrendous wedding days and nights imaginable. Ever wondered what it’s like to play Scrabble against Betty White? Tom provides the details (as well as provides a play-by-play recap of his young daughter’s food fight with Betty—at Betty’s request). His memoir captures, in vivid detail, the adoption fiascos he encountered on his way to becoming a father of two daughters and then the devastating separation from them. Not once but twice.
Plagued for years by self-doubt, he shares how difficult it can be to distinguish between having luck and having real talent in the corporate world. He recaps, in stunning detail, how, in that corporate world, some of us are more equal than others. For those who believe a corporate code of ethics applies to all, Tom will disabuse you of that notion.
His concluding chapter provides recommendations for couples planning to be married or become parents. Those distinctive insights, provided from a child’s point of view, likely won’t be found in any other guides to a successful marriage or parenthood.

Sujets

• Autobiography
• Biography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 24 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669843641
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

THREE LONG AND TOO SHORT
A Memoir of a Lost and Found and Lost Life
Tom Qualley

Copyright © 2022 by Tom Qualley.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022915582
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-4365-8

Softcover
978-1-6698-4366-5

eBook
978-1-6698-4364-1
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Front and Back Cover Photography by: Mark Richardson
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 11/30/2022
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
843304
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
Introduction
 
My Earliest Childhood Memory
The Beginnings of It All
Grade-School Disasters
Loose-Change Bribery
Loaded Guns and Trophies
Marriage and College
Career Success and Adoption Fiascos
Welcomes, Farewells and Awards
No Way in Hell Am I Going Back There!
Old Roots and New Routes
The Daughter, the Car and the Hot Coffee
“Yes, I’m Betty White”
2001 Upheaval
U-Turns
National Recognition
Seat of the Pants Behind the Wheel and in the Office
Lovebirds
Looking Back at the Lessons I Learned
Concluding Thoughts and Feelings
 
Epilogue
FOREWORD
I wonder how many psychiatry “rules” I’m breaking by writing about my patient, even if he asked me to do so. So what? Rules are made to be broken, right? Boundaries are made to be breached. And Tom has breached the limits of many boundaries in his journey. Thus, following his example, I can do no less.
Tom first came to see me in the 1990’s. At that time, neither of us could contemplate the paths he would take over time, personally and professionally. His forging those new paths was achieved through his determination, persistence, and courage—the very qualities that led him out of his Minnesota rural roots in the first place.
Being a psychiatrist, I hear stories about traumatic families and people’s struggles to overcome the residue of that trauma. Tom’s story is haunting and sobering: it is hard to accept the nature of the trauma he writes about. Even having heard traumatic stories, I was demoralized by understanding Tom’s environment growing up. That he escaped from it—scarred by it, but escape he did—is testament to his grit and unique gifts.
My enduring impressions of Tom his wicked sense of humor, his intelligence, his Minnesota accent, his love for his children, his professional success, and his courage in being true to his inner self. How brave he has been! He has withstood the disapprobation of friends and family, society in some respects, and the lack of understanding of those closest to him. He has endured, thrived, and earned his satisfaction in life many times over.
I am humbled by having been asked to write this forward. I smile to think of Tom as I have known him over time and as he is now. He is a mensch, something rural Minnesotans might not understand, but I know Tom understands now, as he surely has all of the qualities of a true mensch .
With much fondness for Tom, I recommend this book to you readers. You won’t be disappointed to discover Tom Qualley and his journey.
Dr. Joyce Kamanitz
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful for the input provided by my very good friend, Karen Heller, as I constructed this memoir. Her input and insights were very helpful throughout the process. My great sister-in-law Christina Richardson also deserves plaudits for her valuable commentary for months on end.
Thanks also to Tom Williams, Dave Mahder and Frank McCauley for taking a chance on me during my great years of working with them. And to Louise, David and Debra for being the best lieutenants to serve with me throughout my career.
A special thank you to my former doctor and new friend, Joyce Kamanitz. If it weren’t for her guidance and support over the years, I wouldn’t be here today. To my partner, Mark Richardson, who gives me every reason to live today and finally to my two great daughters. Because of them, I live for tomorrow.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The names of the author’s daughters have been changed to protect their privacy.
INTRODUCTION
After a long battle with clinical depression that likely began when I was a young boy and endured into my forties, I realized that if I didn’t seek out professional guidance, my life would no longer be worth living. I really didn’t think I would be a big loss to anyone if I committed suicide. I was tired—no, exhausted from enduring life.
While I saw countless others around me seeming to enjoy life, I wasn’t one of them. Pretending to be one of them had become exhausting. My marriage was failing. I felt I was failing as a father. While my career trajectory was extraordinary, given my childhood, it wasn’t bringing personal satisfaction. I seriously doubted that if I committed suicide my daughters, or anyone else for that matter, would miss me.
My wife at that time, Barbara, insisted we try to save our marriage with professional counseling. Feeling I had nothing to lose, I agreed. After two introductory joint visits, the psychiatrist to whom we had been referred, Dr. Joyce Kamanitz, recommended we conduct further sessions separately for a while. We agreed. After two separate sessions, Barbara revealed she had no confidence in the psychiatrist and wanted to seek another counselor instead. I disagreed.
Barbara had developed a habit of constantly seeking out new doctors when she disagreed with their diagnoses and subsequent recommendations. Much to her chagrin, I remained with Dr. Joyce Kamanitz. Thanks to her, I am alive today.
Like everyone else, my life has been full of joys and sorrows. Now though, I savor the joyful events and handle the sad times differently than I did before entering counseling. I try to avoid revisiting my childhood days and instead reflect on how amazing it has been for a little lonely boy growing up in a backwoods rural setting to finally be moving to the emotional and physical place I live in today.
I’ve learned a lot. I still have questions. Where I am on this incredible journey of life is anyone’s guess. I still have important goals to achieve before I consider that my life was one well-lived. Likely we all do. But if any can find a lesson from my life to help them in theirs, I know I will have achieved one of them.
I’ve not written a primer on how to quickly get rich nor a spiritual guide. There is not a fairy-tale ending where every character lives happily ever after. Instead, it is a chronicle of enduring but hardly enjoying childhood. It illustrates how thinking and feeling as a child can still influence life as an adult. And then overcoming that.
We all hear and speak the phrase “all grown up now.” We generally apply it to someone who has attained adult height and weight and/or may have reached the age of sixteen or eighteen. Yet we have no idea as to whether or not the emotional development has matched the physical development. If flawed thinking and feeling development has not maintained pace with physical development, we rush to judgment when we say to someone, “You’re all grown up now.”
It isn’t much of a leap to then move to the next familiar phrase: “He/she is on her own now.” Can someone, if they carry the weight of a bruised childhood identity or flawed thinking process into adulthood, be all grown up? Can they successfully (in every sense of the word) be on their own?
I have no easy answer to that. But I can say that the baggage I carried from childhood into adulthood became heavier with each passing year. Discarding it after decades of being “all grown up” was, at times, harder than carrying it. And for me and likely many others, being on my own was never true until I finally left the baggage behind.
This is my story of being all grown up now and being on my own.
But not alone.
MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY
My mother, Agnes, loved playing her violin. She never had any formal lessons. Instead, she learned from her father, Joseph. He’d made her first one from discarded wood cigar boxes when she was a child and let her have fun.
Joseph loved to whittle in his spare time, usually in the evening when farming duties were completed and after all had gone to bed. When he learned that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been diagnosed with polio, he found a young diamond willow tree and from that carved the president a new cane. Shortly after sending it off to the White House, he received a letter from President Roosevelt thanking him for the cane. That letter held a place of high honor in his little farm home.
Over seventy years later, I made an inquiry to the Hyde Park, New York, museum dedicated to Roosevelt. I wanted to know if the cane was a part of the museum. I learned after Roosevelt’s death the cane was donated to a charity specifically for polio victims.
Mom never had formal music lessons but “learned to play by ear,” as she would later say. Joined by three others from our rural neighborhood, she would occasionally play at local resorts in northern Minnesota for the tourists. The quartet would bring home a few dollars each, but they didn’t play for the money. They played for the fun of it. And everyone had a good time. Or so I thought.
One late summer Saturday evening in 1959 when I was five y