Thomas Lexemuel Essex M-F-52-4

Thomas Lexemuel Essex, 95, died of cancer Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 1:17 a.m., at his home in Columbus. Tom was born November 30, 1915 in Nineveh Township, in an area called Kansas, which is now part of Camp Atterbury, to Katherine Dodd Essex and Lexemuel "Lex" Essex, a farmer and noted breeder of American Fox Hounds. Tom was the last surviving child of a family that included brothers John and Philip "Sap", and sisters Ruth and Miriam Essex, Esther Carson and Alice Lemley. Tom was graduated from Edinburg High School in 1934. He married Betty Mae Gharst in 1941, just prior to the entry of the U.S. in World War II. Around the time their families were uprooted from their farms for the establishment of Camp Atterbury, the couple went to work in the war industry, including in the Evansville Shipyard, where Tom operated huge gantry cranes in the production of LSTs to carry tanks and other vehicles and some troops for allied invasions in the European and Pacific Theaters of Operations. Tom and Betty's daughter, Anita, was born in Evansville in April, 1943. Tom enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944 and was stationed at Pearl Harbor, again operating large cranes, used this time in ship repair. While occupying his vantage point high above the harbor, he twice spotted President Roosevelt walking below his crane and also saw General Douglas MacArthur. FDR had disembarked from the heavy cruiser Baltimore, and Tom could see the presidential Scottish Terrier, Fala, on the deck under the watchful care of several sailors. On May 21, 1944, Tom was witness to explosions from the "West Loch Disaster" in which 163 men died when several LSTs loaded with ordnance and fuel caught fire and exploded in a chain reaction in a remote area of Pearl Harbor. Tom had come to believe he had imagined the whole terrible incident because no news whatsoever emerged to shed light on what had occurred, but the facts were finally declassified in 1960. Postwar, Tom took part in a Navy mission to remove U.S. personnel and their families from Chinese ports just ahead of the Maoist revolution. In the early 1950s, Tom joined his brother at Sap's Bakery, which grew to be the biggest "doughnut mill" in the world, a business which is sorely missed by many pastry lovers who remember savoring the unparalleled smell and taste of warm yeast doughnuts from Sap's. Tom was responsible for the increasingly complex machinery used in the bakery's processes and was the buyer for ingredients and supplies which eventually came by the boxcar-load in the case of flour, sugar and shortening. Outside of work, Tom threw his considerable energies into Democratic politics on the local, state and federal levels. He had grown up a child of the Depression and shared in his family's hero-worship of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Just as his father, Lex, had been influential behind the scenes in local politics, Tom proved to possess the same talents. He served as manager for his wife Betty's four successful campaigns for Bartholomew County Clerk and one for Columbus City Council. He has written that Betty was "one of the best political technicians in the state," and that her ambition "was to be the perfect public servant, and she has come very close to this goal." He won his own election as well for the Indiana House of Representatives in the 1960s but lost his reelection bid; he confessed that his skills "lay more towards the power broker side." He worked with some of the most influential Hoosier Democrats of the era, such as Governors Matthew E. Welsh and Roger D. Branigan, Bill Fortune and local Democrats Lee Hamilton and Dick Stoner. It was the campaign and presidency of John F. Kennedy that was the highlight of Tom's political life. He, Betty and Anita had attended the Democratic National Conventions in Chicago in 1952 and 1956, and when JFK lost the nomination for the vice presidency at the latter convention, they made their way to the podium afterward, and catching JFK's attention, Tom pledged his full support to him, "anytime you want to run for president!" When JFK indeed secured the presidential nomination at the 1960 convention in Los Angeles, the Essex family was present, and Tom was delighted to head the local Citizens for Kennedy group during JFK's subsequent run, and he brought the candidate and a party of celebrities to Columbus for a campaign stop. Tom later became an enthusiastic supporter of Robert Kennedy during his presidential primary campaign, and spent time with him when he, too, visited Columbus. Though Tom was a delegate when he and Anita traveled to Atlantic City for the 1964 convention, and both wrote and took photographs for the then Columbus Evening Republican, Tom had nearly lost his taste for national politics. He wrote in his memoirs, "To this day, in the field of politics, I have never recovered from the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers... Neither do I feel comfort in [any] president who favors laws that allow anyone to purchase and use hand carried machine guns all because he fears the... gun lobby might not support him in future elections." Sap and Tom "retired" after 30 years as president and vice president of Sap's Foods when the company was bought by Beatrice Foods in 1980. The brothers did not remain idle, however, but established a commodities trading office in downtown Columbus. When the time came for him to actually retire, Tom embarked on a number of new projects, including learning to bake bread, at which he was very successful, using his research skills to perfect ingredients, mixing, proofing and baking. Travel became Tom and Betty's greatest pleasure in their retirement; they often visited Anita and her family in California. As was his habit, Tom again did plenty of research, using newspapers and magazines to find the best trips, airfares and accommodations -- all in pre-Internet days. The couple especially enjoyed seeing plays in London's West End. They often traveled with other family members, twice taking canal-boat trips with relatives on waterways in France. They traveled to a number of European countries before venturing into Asia to visit China, which Tom had remembered from his 1946 rescue mission for the U.S. Navy. He wrote articles about those trips for The Republic; he was 90 when he and Betty made their second trip to China. Tom's final project was his front-yard tomato garden, which he started from seed each year and which yielded enough tomatoes to eat, give away and make more than 100 quarts of juice, accomplished with the help of his usual research; by this time he had taught himself to use his Macintosh to avail himself of the latest information on tomato culture. Survivors include his daughter, Anita Gyojin Cherlin and son-in-law, Edward Mokurai Cherlin of Columbus; grandchildren, Sarah Miriam Cherlin of San Francisco and Clement Samuel Cherlin of Columbus; nephews, Max and John Lemley and Phil Essex; and niece, Karen Arnold, all of Columbus; nephew, James Carson of Elizabethtown; nieces, Kathryn Balsley of Anderson, Anna McCann of Indianapolis, and Linda Sampson of Phoenix. Tom's wife, Betty, died April 9, 2010. He was also preceded in death by his parents and six siblings. A memorial service will be conducted Wednesday, September 21 at 11 a.m. at Barkes, Weaver & Glick Funeral Home on Washington Street. There will be no calling hours before or after the service. A private family graveside inurnment will take place at Rest Haven Cemetery in Edinburgh. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to Hospice of South Central Indiana, 2626 East 17th Street, Columbus, IN 47201. Online condolences may be sent to the Essex family at www.barkesweaverglick.com.