MAY/JUNE 2002

An everyday goodness - Steven Tompsett

When the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center an Australian, Steven Tompsett, was there, attending a conference at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th floor. 'Something has happened', he e-mailed his wife urgently. 'Can you turn on the TV, find out and get back to me?' It was their last contact; there were no more messages from his laptop and presumably he died soon afterwards.

Anyone's death diminishes us all, the poet has said, but some losses are a grievous diminishment. In the outpourings of grief that followed 11 September 2001, it became clear that Steve Tompsett's death was one of these. People spoke of his achievements as a computer scientist, of his leadership qualities at work, of what a creative mentor he had been to them. Noticeably, they did not recite what he had done, so much as what he had been. 'Brilliant, easygoing and religious', was his sister-in-law's description of him, quoted in The New York Times. She said he gave everyone the same advice: 'Your family comes first. Then your faith. Then your job.'

Steve imbibed those standards from his parents, who were stalwarts of Merrylands parish, west of Sydney, his mother a catechist for some three decades, his father a Vincent de Paul man for over half a century. Growing up there with two brothers and a sister, he was an altar boy and then a lector. He went to local Catholic schools, where he was dux, ranking in the state's top one per cent at the Higher School Certificate.

A first class honours degree in economics and computer science as well as the University Medal at the University of Sydney launched him on a career in the computer industry. A couple of years later, a business trip to New York saw him fall in love with the city and get a job there. He married a local woman and they had a daughter. The family lived on Long Island and went to Mass at the local parish.

Steve Tompsett was a reflective man. Sitting in a pew at St Joseph's church Sunday after Sunday, he came to feel that something was missing, something he had known intimately in the Merrylands parish back home in Sydney. In New York he didn't feel connected to his parish, the way he had in Sydney. He missed that deep sense of belonging to a faith community. So when the New York parish announced a 'stewardship fair', to showcase the variety of ministries open to parishioners, he and his wife went along.

Steve wanted to set his daughter an example of involvement, as his own parents had done for him. He became a Eucharistic minister and a lector once again, which led him to join the parish school board and its stewardship committee and to lead a lay discussion group. His daughter followed her parents' commitment, joining the girls' choir. Two years ago, the choir went to Rome, to sing for the Pope and to give a concert in the Sistine Chapel. The Australian grandparents made the trip from Merrylands and Steve said it was one of the high points of his life.

He made that comment in a remarkable five-minute talk given at Sunday Mass three months before his death. Speaking quite personally to fellow parishioners, he assured them that his experience of stewardship ('giving back to God', he called it) had afforded him a deeper sense of his own faith. Giving back to God is always a two-way street, he said.

By the time he delivered that Sunday talk, many others had noticed a deepening in Steve Tompsett. After his death, people told the family again and again that he had changed from being a man with a head for technology, to being a man with a heart for people. His brother Geoff said that they were made aware of his great impact on people's lives-because of the person he was.

More than a year before he died, Steve had tried to articulate his faith-born core values in a manifesto to his work colleagues. At its heart was an insistence on the value and uniqueness of each person he worked with. About the same time, a friend died of cancer. Steve told the widow that he had lain awake all night reflecting on the meaning of life and death and determining to work harder at living up to his ideals.

The Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote a book about the 'banality' of evil-meaning that evil is commonplace, everyday, you can meet it in the streets coming from the shops. Stephen Tompsett's shortened life tells us that you can say the same about goodness-it is ordinary, everyday, you can meet it in your local parish.