I have quite a few "colorful" memories dating from the period when I was Tom's graduate student in the 1970s. For some reason I have an indelible memory of taking a look at Tom's vita, which was laying around the office, like everything else, and seeing that he was born in 1939 and thinking how old he was. Of course, I'm now way older than he was then.
I was an undergraduate at Columbia, moved to Chicago for a year, and then came back to be Tom's graduate student. The week I arrived in New York Tom let me stay at his apartment on Morningside Drive, the biggest apartment I had ever seen. It had room after room. One Sunday morning it was pouring rain and he got me up to go for dim sum at a place on Broadway in the 90s that served what I much later learned was Taiwanese style dim sum. I had never tasted anything like it of course (little savory sesame cakes; soy milk soup) and it added to Tom's aura of brilliance that he actually knew of such places and exactly what to order. At some later point a group of us were eating there and I noticed that the asian customers got their tea served from ceramic teapots whereas the non-asians got theirs in plain old stainless steel teapots. This was a rule, not a probabilistic constraint. Tom immediately provoked a cultural crisis by insisting that our table be given the precious ceramic pots. I copied the way Tom mixed hot sesame oil, soy sauce and rice vinegar to dip his cruller in, and still use that method (good for all manner of dumplings).
Here is one other story that is somehow representative of the nature of my graduate career and relationship with Tom. It has nothing to do with science. At one point I was apartment sitting at his place (he had moved to Claremont Ave. by then). Tom had been seeing a young lady whose father was reputed to have something to do with the conduct of business on the New Jersey waterfront. Her family must not have approved of her relationship with the distinguished professor. One night at his place the phone rang; I answered it, and someone said, in the accent of the New Jersey waterfront, "Stay away from da Jones girl if ya know what's good fa ya"(name changed to protect the innocent, then as now, ME). I hung up the phone shaking. I thought, you've got the wrong guy! Story of my life! I'm going to get knocked off for seeing somebody I'm not even seeing!
Tom is a colorful fellow who lives a colorful life. As students we got to share in a little of it; sometimes the food was really good and sometimes your life was on the line.