Obituary for Thomas "Tom" Barter, Jr.

"When I was young, Tom Barter was one of my close friends\u2014we called him \u201cTim\u201d then and it wasn\u2019t until college (with Tom as my roommate) that he switched over.\r\nAs a kid, he was like all of us other kids in our goofy ways (stealing cigarettes from our mothers\u2019 packs of Kools and trying to learn to smoke, which in the end, made us both sick) unless it came to mechanical things. Then he was the young adult, studying each piece of his lawn mower, his moto-cross bike, his father\u2019s car, as if it were a museum object\u2014how did it work? How did it fit in with the other pieces? What could make it better? I had very little interest in mechanical things then and it amazed me how much thought and effort he put into absorbing, at a young age, what would become his life\u2019s passion. I\u2019m glad he built an airplane\u2014he would have loved the challenge and the risky complications. Tom was a good humored, truly decent young man when I knew him. I wish I could visit him still. All the best to his wife, Grace, whom I met only a few times and even then seemed the exact wife for him. I hope the years were happy and the memories are deep. Ric Birch\r\n"