Long-time readers will be sad to learn that former R&T Editor-in-Chief Tom Bryant passed away on March 4th of this year, at the age of 76, due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was living on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where he and his wife Patty Bryant moved after Tom’s retirement in 2008.
Tom came on board as Editor in 1988 and ran the magazine for 20 years. He was preceded in the position by John Dinkel and followed after his retirement by Matt DeLorenzo, and I was lucky enough to work for all three of these gentlemen. And I use the word advisedly. These were three of the best guys you could hope to know, but Tom was in charge for most of my years as a full-timer at the magazine.
He first joined the R&T family in 1972 with our one-time sister publication, Pickup, Van & 4wd, a magazine headed by former R&T Editor James. T. Crow. After that, he worked as a staff editor at R&T, and also as Editor-in-Chief at our Specials division.
James T. (“Jim”) Crow became a good friend of mine and often said it was always a matter of great pride that he’d had the good sense to hire a young car enthusiast named Tom Bryant. A graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, with both a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science, Tom had worked as a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. State Department in Argentina, as well as a jazz announcer and news director in radio. Jim was impressed that Tom had shown up for a job interview in a sport coat and tie at a particularly relaxed moment in counterculture fashion, and “was polite, well-spoken and smart.”
So when Tom moved into the Editor’s chair at R&T, he was not just a seasoned staffer, but a life-long car fanatic with deep roots. One of his first sports cars was a Mercedes 300SL Roadster, no less, which he bought used for $4,500. He would joke, ruefully, that he put several thousand miles on the car and later sold it for the same $4,500 without losing a dime.
Tom took to his Editor’s chair with a natural sense of ease and command, a trait I always attributed to his upbringing as the son of a Naval officer. Our comparison test trips were always carefully coordinated with the art department and photographers, so everyone knew exactly where we were going and what was expected, without any wasted time. But behind that firm sense of order was a wonderfully wry sense of humor that made these trips fun and memorable.
On one sport wagon comparison test, we finished a photo shoot at the Grand Canyon and had to drive all the way back to the Morro Bay Inn on the California coast. When we were still a few hours away we ran into heavy fog, and I suggested that, if necessary, we could just pull over and sleep in our cars. Tom said, “Before I sleep in a car, I will buy a house.”
I countered, “Come on, Tom, where’s your sense of adventure?”
He said, “I can find all the adventure I need in a 4-star hotel.”
Note, too, that we were staying at the Morro Bay Inn, a lovely resort on the coast. On a trip with Tom you worked hard, but here were no seedy motels or meals at fast food joints. He liked excellence in lodging and restaurants. And when the work was all done, we had good wine with dinner.
He liked nice cars, too. He was a very fast and smooth driver on the track in any sports car, but when it came to personal choices, I think he favored refined GT cars above all others. My image of him on the road at his most content has him behind the wheel of a Jaguar, Aston Martin or Mercedes grand touring car with the top down.
In the past few days, our email inbox has produced a flood of good memories from nearly everyone who worked with Tom. And the same key words keep appearing over and over kindness, honor, loyalty, dignity, wit. Richard Baron, our former Art Director, has a memory of Tom that pretty much says it all.
He recalls the time we were making very good speed (some would say breaking the sound barrier) across the empty back roads of Arizona with five or six high performance cars strung out along the highway, when the lead car announced on our hand-held radios that he was being pulled over for speeding. Instead of slowing down and cruising safely past the arrest scene, Tom instructed all of us to pull over and park behind the lead car. We did so, and the amazed State Patrolman let the lead driver off with a barely suppressed grin and a stern warning. Tom had a high sense of loyalty and honor; it was all for one and one for all. He never took the easy or convenient way out. You could count on it.
After Barb and I left California and moved back to rural Wisconsin in 1990, I continued to work for R&T under a contract that required me to do a monthly column and at least one feature story a month. Then I was diagnosed with Hepatitis-C in 1995 and had to undergo six months of chemo that pretty much knocked me out of action. I called Tom and told him I was too sick to travel for feature writing, but would probably be able to do a column each month. He said, “Don’t worry about travel or the feature stories; just get better.” My paychecks continued to arrive during those months when I could barely function.
Virtually everyone who worked at R&T during those years has a similar story. If you had a medical or family problem, you knew you had the time and support to take care of it. No question. Tom was that rarest of things, a clear-eyed realist with a heart.
In 2012, he was awarded the Dean Bachelor Lifetime Achievement Award from the Motorsports Press Guild, and it couldn’t have gone to a better man. His achievements were a blessing on all our lifetimes.
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