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Memorializing The Spirit Of Giving
Tom Thweatt III had an overriding passion to help others and lived a life that held no regrets.
“He appreciated each day and didn’t worry too much about the next, but for every day his prayer was always that God provide him an opportunity to help someone,” said his father W.T. “Tom” Thweatt Jr. “That’s the way he lived.”
A “brilliant” but “low-key” young man who never bragged about his accomplishments, Tom received a bachelor’s degree in psychology with honors from Texas A&M University in only three years.
After working in the restaurant business, he decided to return to A&M for a Master of Business Administration degree. Although Tom completed his graduate studies, it was toward the end of the program that “he realized his heart was really in spiritual counseling,” according to his father.
Tom’s life goal of helping others brought him to Sam Houston State where he joined the master’s program in counseling. On March 9, 2005, just months away from graduating, Tom was killed in an automobile accident. He was 29 years old.
In August, when Tom would have graduated, Sam Houston awarded the degree to him posthumously. Ann Marie, his wife and “soul mate,” to whom he had been married exactly 19 months on the day he died, walked across the stage to accept the diploma.
Choosing “to keep his name alive,” Thweatt and his wife Lou established the W. Tom Thweatt III Memorial Graduate Fellowship Endowment Fund for “people like Tom who share similar aspirations and career goals,” Thweatt said.
After the endowment was established, the level and number of contributions from friends, peers and colleagues, including SHSU faculty members, far exceeded the average contributions made to a student “in memory gift,” according to Darlene Andrews, director of donor relations for University Advancement.
The room in the Jack Staggs Clinic where Tom did most of his counseling has since been named in his honor. In addition, his fellow classmates planted a crepe myrtle tree on the north side of the clinic in his memory. A plaque marks the tree.
“It wasn’t in his nature to just talk about helping people; his nature was to actually take action and help people,” Thweatt said. “That’s what gave Tom satisfaction: waking up in the morning and thinking about his day, who he could interface with and how he could touch them.”
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