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Tom was always a great part of the team, and he would often run with us in the morning, even when he had been up half the night, if not all of it, recutting sails or redirecting our entire computer-analysis programs. His arsenal was huge. He estimated very early on that we would be taking to Newport 40 genoas, 10 mainsails, and 50 spinnakers, with probably 20 sails on the boat for anyone race. Each sail’s shape, configuration, and driving power were Tom’s responsibility. And he attended to every single detail throughout the campaign. He was not interested in extravagance, only in scientific conclusions. For instance, in the American camp, if a sail is not doing its job, Dennis Conner will just whistle up a half-dozen new sails. In earlier campaigns, we had a tendency to do the same thing. Tom detested this approach. He thought it was crazy because he did not think sail manufacturing was sufficiently accurate. He thought recutting was more progressive, correctly working to a scientific conclusion. Once we had a sail that was good, we just kept recutting it, sometimes to a fraction of an inch, keeping it good, dealing with the stretch instead of starting again with a new one. In that way he was extremely conservative, but he was at the same time extremely potent, because he made sure we always had our fingers on every pulse with great accuracy. Amusingly, after all this heavy concentration on his job, Tom’s hobby is sailboarding. He is, I suppose, totally consumed with the effect of the wind in the intricate science of driving a boat, of whatever weight, forward. Money does not do it for him—nor, apparently, does recognition, for in his own country he is just about unknown, despite his international reputation. Tom’s raison d’être is, I suppose, the pursuit of excellence for the sake of pure excellence. That is an ennobling way of living your life and one of which I very much approve.
Born to Win
John Bertrand
Denying your creativity is like staying in a toxic relationship or a dead-end job because you can’t imagine anything better.
Creative Calling
Chase Jarvis
The consequence of all this was a standard of living beyond the comprehension of the rest of the world. Nearly 60 percent of all American families were reporting wages in the middle-class brackets. Just since the late 1940s the median family income had risen from $3,083 to $5,657; even when corrected for inflation this meant a rise of 48 percent.
The Glory and the Dream
William Manchester
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