Tom Gerritt is many things: husband, father of four, active church member, staunch patriot and now novelist. He began reading insatiably and writing secretly while growing up in rural Arkansas where there were often far too many empty plates on a table beneath which seven pairs of feet shuffled, and the family often struggled financially and many other ways.
If the 1950’s were a challenging time for Tom and his family the 1960’s were downright demanding, and because the men in his father’s family had always been in the Navy and those in his mother’s had always been Marines, a choice as to branch of service had to be made. A few flips of a nickel satisfactorily resolved the matter for Tom and all others concerned and set Tom on a course he would follow for eleven harrowing years during which he received a variety of decorations. All the while, Tom read voraciously and continued to write whenever possible, usually in the form of letters home formatted as a diary to be circulated among family members. Of those days Tom made a recent diary entry, “…that even now, daily and all these decades later the hole in my soul is often best filled and the musings of my troubled mind best occupied by memories of the Truong Son (Ho Chi Minh Trail), the silence of the living, the voices of the dead…”
Later educated at the University of Missouri and the University of Arkansas Graduate Institute of Technology, Tom engaged in a long career in aviation that led him literally around the face of the globe first as a pilot qualified in both rotor-wing and fixed-wing aircraft, an inspector, and later a mechanical instructor for which he received a Distinguished Service Award for industrial training from the state of Arkansas. His writing in those days centered on the technical documents and instructions related to his job, Bible study guides and Sunday school outlines for the classes he taught whenever he was home and, as a form of both escape and self-expression, plot outlines for novels of various genre.
After leaving the aviation industry Tom embarked on a different journey, taking on various roles in public service first as a police officer, then a firefighter and technical rescue specialist and finally as a medical field training officer and decorated paramedic. Still, he continued to read and write, eventually fleshing out a number of manuscripts the first of which, A Mirror in Pieces, is due for release in the summer of 2018.
Tom met his wife Trish on a firing range – he was her handgun instructor, so there’s still an element of danger in his life and he likes it that way.
Like many of his friends, Tom enjoys fishing and quiet times, conversation, and a good cup of coffee – strong and black and as large as possible. He and Trish now live in the Richmond, Virginia area with a menagerie of animals that includes tropical fish, cats and dogs.
