“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.” This was my first thought when asked to write this. One of the finest toxicologists in the world and out there in Seattle! I was aware of Ted’s accomplishments but had not met him personally until we found ourselves on the Council of the SOT. He invited me to a private breakfast meeting so we could review several issues he was going to discuss at the Council meeting. I was understandably anxious. Our breakfasts arrived and I began trying to cut the bacon. Ted looked at me with a strip of bacon between his thumb and forefinger and said, “fingers before forks” and began to eat and enjoy his bacon. Wow, the great Dr. Loomis using his fingers to eat. I began to relax. Here was my kind of guy, highly intelligent and down to earth and practical. It was an interesting and informative breakfast.
The following year we met in the lobby of the conference hotel. The clerk confirmed that Dr. Loomis had a reservation and he asked for his credit card. Ted replied that all his transactions were in cash and he would pay in advance with cash. He showed the clerk a stack of bills and the clerk refused to accept the money even though Ted was paying in advance. Ted said to the clerk, “cash before credit cards.” The manager accepted the cash. He was a man of few words either because he believed the Jesuistic precept that in all transactions, especially teaching, we should “be brief, be blunt, and be gone” or in Alexander Pope’s statement that “Words like leaves where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is seldom found.” And when Ted published his book on the principles of toxicology, Essentials of Toxicology, I knew it would be a relatively small volume and highly concentrated; it was. This book was revised several times, including the Third Edition co-authored with Dr. Wally Hayes.
During Council meetings, Ted would briefly present an issue and encourage both sides to briefly state their cases. He would summarize the arguments concisely, state his position (which he had studied carefully) and how it would benefit the SOT, and then call for a vote. Council usually approved the motion. It seemed that he usually decided upon the simpler course of action (Occam’s Razor).
But there was another side to Ted—his compassion and his respect for the sanctity of life. Mary and I visited Ted and Marian on Whidbey Island. One morning, he and I took a walk and discussed the application of Occam’s Razor to some toxicological issues of mutual concern. We were interrupted by a neighbor who asked him to come by and have a look at his horse who was not doing well. Ted did and after he diagnosed the problem and recommended treatment, the neighbor asked him to please look at his son who seemed to have a sore throat and ear ache. Ted, the vet, approached the young boy, diagnosed the problem, and recommended treatment—Ted the pediatrician. He ministered to “man and beast” with great sensitivity. What a man! The population of Whidbey Island undoubtedly viewed Ted as the people in Oliver Goldsmith’s Deserted Village viewed their parson: “While words of learned length and thundering sound, Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around, And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew.”
Our lives were enriched by the presence of Ted Loomis and I was privileged to be his friend. My final tribute: "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!"
“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how liken a god.”