Remembering Tom

Tom Clements

I was on a cross country trip and a little out of the loop regarding national news. I heard scraps of news but nothing in detail. When I got home I realized that the shooting death of the Colorado Prisons Director, that I was only vaguely aware of, was a friend of mine from my time at the Missouri Department of Corrections. Tom Clements went to Colorado a couple years ago to be their prisons director but prior to that he worked here in Missouri.  I retired back in 2000 and only saw or spoke with him a few times since then but I had worked with Tom for maybe ten or twelve years before that. We both worked for the Board of Probation and Parole before jumping to the Department of Corrections. I think that's when I met him....he was in one of the St. Louis offices while I was in the central office in Jefferson City.

I am one of the most patient people around but Tom had me beat. He was able to express ideas and patiently work toward a distant goal or objective. He had an optimism that was rare in Corrections. I'm sure he was stressed out as much as everyone else but he managed to contain it and seemed to be a calming influence.

If you were a wrestler, Tom was the guy you would want on your tag-team.  We occasionally worked together and I never doubted that he would back me up.  He was a good friend, a dedicated professional and a caring family man.

I recall one odd occurrence years ago when my family and some friends went on a vacation in Colorado. We were driving home and stopped at a McDonald's restaurant in Limon, Colorado. While I was there I ran into Tom who was just starting a vacation trip to Colorado. It was a funny coincidence that we would both be there at the same time but Tom's reactions was just like it was a normal occurrence...of course we would run into each other eight hundred miles from home.

I don't know the details of his murder -- only that he was at home and someone came to the door and he was shot when he opened the front door.  In my imagination I can actually see him doing that without any misgiving or safety concern...somebody needed his attention and he went...that's the way he was.