Tom was born in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. His father was a manager at Rex Chain Belt that manufactured metal chain belts for industrial and farm machinery. After several acquisitions, the name is now Norberg Manufacturing. The firm was criticized by President Trump in December 2016 for closing a plant and transferring three hundred jobs to a new plant in Mexico. His mother was an occupational therapist, which explains Tom’s personality! The highlight of his childhood was a Golden Retriever he was given in the seventh grade, and that Tom shepherded through obedience training to compete in a retrieve and jump course during grade school at Whitefish Bay. High school followed with Tom graduating from Nicolet High. Tom saw a Lt. Robinson Crusoe movie in 1966 with his brother Tim (passed away in 1999). The character in the movie wanted to be named something else like “Dwight”. His older brother started calling Tom “Dwight”. The name struck as he followed his older brother to Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois receiving a B.A in Business Management and Administration in 1975. Bradley had a competitive basketball team and four team members lived on Tom’s floor his freshman year. Although not on the team, Tom, 1 of the players and numerous other friends still gather at Peoria once a year for a senior age group reunion. Tom served as a resident dorm advisor from his sophomore through senior year at Bradley. As a Bradley student, Tom worked part time at Tinder Box, a cigar and tobacco store.
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Graduation resulted in a move to Champaign Urbana, Illinois to open a new Tinder Box location. From there he migrated to a management trainee program at Sears, and shortly thereafter realized that he needed a change. Loading up what furniture he had and as expected a golden retriever, Tom, in 1980, went back to artic Wisconsin for employment in an inside sales position with a paper firm named Clevepak. The division Tom worked in was sold to Norcross based Rock-Tenn (merged in 2015 with MeadWestvaco and renamed WestRock) in 1983 and relocated to historic Norcross. Tom was responsible for developing the Partition Division sales section of Rock-Tenn. In 1989 Tom was transferred from Norcross to a Rock-Tenn Milwaukee plant where he was responsible for shipping and scheduling. Rock-Tenn next sent travel ready Tom to acquire partition companies in Nova Scotia and Portland, Maine and to instill Rock-Tenn operating procedures.
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The relocations resulted in Tom developing a twenty-year smoking habit of two packs a day. The Portland, Maine plant was a smoke free facility and convinced Tom to kick the habit. After five and a half years as a snow and ice nomad, Tom “jumped” at the opportunity to package himself back to the Norcross home office. Tom retired on December 31, 2016 after thirty-seven years in corporate America. He misses the Rock-Tenn perks like free moving boxes.
On July 4, 1996 Tom could not avoid seeing “all kinds of folks” wearing Peachtree Road Race shirts. Motivated, Tom ran the 1997 Peachtree Road Race and began participating in “more and more races”. Tom realized that he could not compete with “Roger and Bo” in his age group, so he started competing against himself in Run and See, Black Bag, and Clover Glove races. Long term goals are the “Quest for 1,000” races and maybe a race in every state (twelve to date). Tom estimates he needs another five or six years of good health to achieve his goals. Otherwise he will be resigned to having a medical procedure in every state. His favorite race is the Midnight Sun Run in Fairbanks, Alaska that Tom ran in June 2002 where Tom had the opportunity to connect with a long-lost cousin and run the 10K at midnight with the sun brightly shinning. Georgia favorite races are the ones that serve the best race food. Best race will be the one that serves a cold beer at the end of a hot weather run.
Bob checking out from the back of the pack. Look for the profile of Tammy Miller and profile of Mark Polson.