Bill Morem: A friend’s legacy: a life well-lived

By Bill Morem

My friend Kim Dunn nicely sums up impending boomer mortality with a golfing metaphor: We’re now playing the back nine of life.

It’s a point that’s driven home to me on a weekly basis, because that’s about how often I’m now losing someone I’ve known my entire life.

Through absolutely no skill or ability of my own, I’ve been fortunate to call this county my home since 1951.

During that time, through my parents’ extensive circle of friends, I’ve been privileged to know some exceptional individuals. And the sad but inevitable truth is: Many of these good people have played their final round and are now dying.

Case in point is Tom Coull. Tom died last week, about a month shy of his 80th birthday.

I’ve known Tom and his wife, Kathy, for most of my life; Kathy taught me how to swim around 1955 at the Nuss Memorial Pool at San Luis High School. At the time, Tom was administrator of French Hospital when it was on Marsh Street.

Always a handsome man, he possessed movie-star good looks in those years and had more than a passing resemblance to George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on television.

And Tom lived life on superhuman terms.

After moving to San Luis in 1938, he quickly became an Eagle Scout, was senior class president at San Luis High and held a state record for the high jump. After high school, he joined the Marines; earned a degree in finance from UCLA and, later, a master’s in business administration from the University of Chicago. Ever the achiever, he became Edison French’s chief administrator at the age of 23.

His civic involvement with San Luis began when he was elected vice president of the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce and named Outstanding Young Man of the Year in 1956. That service extended as a 50-year Rotarian, serving as the Monday Rotary Club president in 1990-91.

During the 1960s our families skied together in the Sierra, and it was then that I had a front-row seat to Tom’s brio. While everyone else was snowplowing down bunny hills, Tom was first to hit the moguls and any jump that could give him air. After he split his pants on one such jump, we honored him with the sobriquet of “Crazy Coull.”

Tom left hospital administration in 1968 and began a successful real estate business with Kathy that eventually grew to five offices around the county. But as successful as that became, he also found time to ride horses, fly planes, dive the Great Barrier Reef, hike, bike, fly fish and travel the world—all while being a great husband, father, grandfather and friend to all who knew him.

Although his huge grin and infectious laugh were stilled when his heart gave out Feb. 19, his example of living life to the fullest is an inspiration for all us boomers playing the back nine of life.

Thanks, Tom.