My grandparents, Delene Warren and Tom Warren Sr./Provided
By Thomas Warren III, Editor-in-Chief
In my 23 years on this planet, I have experienced a lot of things, but nothing could have prepared me for what I have experienced this year and how it has continued to affect me every day since.
As a few of my friends know, earlier this year, I lost two of my grandparents within four days of one another. My family tragically lost my mother’s mother to a stroke in January and lost my father’s father four days later after a long bout with diabetes complications in home hospice.
Personally, I had never experienced anything quite like losing a grandparent, and nothing could have prepared me for losing two within four days of one another. And one of these losses in particular has been especially impactful on my life over the past few months.
My grandfather, Tom Warren, Sr., was a brilliant man and a person who greatly shaped me into the person who I am today. Although, the two of us became particularly close over the course of the past seven years, the relationship I had with him was one of the most important of my life.
Papa was a tough man, whose character was forged in the shadows of the Great Depression. He started his career rolling quarters in the basement of Amarillo National Bank and eventually ended up as a vice president at the bank and later as an executive at the American Quarter Horse Association. Quite literally, he is one of the only real cases I have ever seen of a person rising from the lowest ranks of an organization or company into being one of its leading figures. But he did it.
My grandfather was born in 1938 and the lessons he learned early in his life as a child of Great Depression and Dust Bowl survivors are the same lessons that I was fortunate enough to have passed down to me over years of being with him. The relationship I had with my grandfather was not something that was just handed to me — he didn’t seek anyone out to give advice or to tell stories. Instead, he let you come to him. And what I learned from spending time around him was that in order to learn from him, I had to seek him out and spend time with him. And it was through this experience that I discovered the rich treasures that lied within his stories, his memories, and his lessons, which he passed down to me as his grandson because I wanted to be with him, I wanted to learn from him, and I wanted him to guide me.
As I said before, my grandfather was not an easy person to be around all of the time. Sometimes, in fact, he was awnry or was what some people might describe as an asshole. But, nonetheless, he was a brilliant man who had many lessons to give. You just had to be willing to listen.
His other grandsons never stuck around to hear those stories, and it’s truly a shame. They all took off and put their relationship with their grandfather on the back burner — or, perhaps more appropriately, in the back of the freezer behind the forgotten bags of peas and mixed vegetables. But I stuck around, listened, and learned. And from that desire to listen blossomed the most important relationship with any person I have had in my entire life.
I learned from my grandfather, not just about business, but also about life, money, marriage, faith, history, and much, much more. I loved hearing his stories about the history of Amarillo and the places and people who have long since been forgotten by time. He was like a living time capsule who in just a few sentences could transport me to the 1950s and 1960s — times when I wasn’t even around, but I felt like I was there thanks to him. Much of my vast knowledge of this city and region’s history is thanks to him.
It is also worth saying that he changed my life in a way that I never even knew was possible. When I started The Pioneer in 2016, I faced a lot of criticism from the local media establishment. But every day, he would sit down, encourage me, and give me advice. And let me be very clear, folks: he never encouraged anyone. But he encouraged me because he believed in me and knew I could do it. And every day when I would bring him home a printed copy of the day’s articles, I always looked forward to the smile on his face and the knowledge that he was proud of me.
My grandfather was — and still is — my greatest hero. And, boy, do I miss him.
The week that I lost my grandfather still is the hardest week of my life that I can remember. Watching him in home hospice as he was approaching the end of his life in those final days — on the heels of my grandmother’s death — was awful. And his passing has left a void in the lives of my closest family members that can never again be filled.
It is beyond sad.
I loved and still love my grandfather and hate to know that he is gone. I’ll never again have a conversation with him and will never again be able to experience one of his stories in person. However, I am blessed to remember the final conversation I had with him in home hospice when he told me that he was proud of me. In many ways, it feels like a parting gift that he knew I would carry with me, long after he would be gone.
I mention all of this today because last week I got a question on Facebook about where I have been over the past couple of months. Why haven’t I been more active against Mayor Ginger Nelson and Amarillo Matters? Why haven’t I been fighting harder against City Hall? Why haven’t I been taking Biden to task more? Did I sell out after six years of not selling out?
The answer is, no, I did not sell out. And, no, I have not gone anywhere. Instead, the past two months have been split between wedding planning — my soon-to-be bride and I are still trying to plan a wedding in the midst of all this — and funeral planning.
But, in the case of my grandfather, I don’t think of it as much of planning a funeral, as I think of it as being the final time that I will be saying goodbye to my hero. And to be honest with all of you reading this, adjusting to that loss has been a hard thing.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to hold my grandfather’s funeral because some of our family has been experiencing health problems preventing them from attending. But, it sounds like finally next weekend, we will be able to hold my grandfather’s funeral and say goodbye one last time to my John Wayne, my real-life western hero — Tom Warren, Sr.
The funeral is going to be hard and it’s going to be sad — I’ll probably cry more than I did writing this article, which saw plenty of tears shed anyway. But, I’m happy to know that it will give us a final opportunity to thank him and say goodbye.
There are many things that I want to thank my grandfather for giving me and showing me. I want to thank him to instilling a love of history in me. I want to thank him for giving me a mind for business. I want to thank him for giving me life advice that I still think about today.
But, most of all, I just want to thank him for being my grandfather and for being my hero.
I miss my grandfather, but I know that he’s still with me in mind, spirit, and memory. And that’s something I will always be grateful for.
This weekend, in many ways, my grandfather will be riding off into the sunset one final time. And as we say goodbye, I know that no matter where I go or where I end up, he’ll always be with me, not in-person, but in my heart, in my mind, and in my memory. And those memories are things that are priceless to me.
I love you, Papa. Thank you for everything. You never will know just how much it all meant to me.