I will always remember my first encounter with Tom at a meeting of the SSA in Santa Cruz. I was a very new graduate student at Scripps. I of course knew him well from his papers on San Andreas seismicity, but had never met him personally. I was at my poster and Tom rushed up in a blaze of enthusiasm, quickly introduced himself, and immediately started complementing me on my work on similar earthquakes in southern California, while making supportive suggestions and indicating that we should collaborate in northern California. By the time we had been talking for a few minutes I knew that I had found a valuable friend and professional ally. On another occasion, again, while still a lowly graduate student giving a talk at Berkeley, I recall how the famous Dr. McEvilly took pains to spend several hours over lunch talking with me about the mysteries of repeating Parkfield microearthquakes, and sharing his ideas about asperities, fluids, and heat flow in the fault zone. I also will always value his sustained generosity in encouraging my involvement with his research team on working with this remarkable data set. Tom set a spectacular example for friendship, scientific productivity, collegiality, and scientific enthusiasm that we should all hope to emulate!