Though he’s a person sure to be remembered vividly by those who knew him, Tad is someone oddly apt to disappear. He planned that, you see. He was very quick at giving others credit, perhaps too quick. Tad seemed eager to blend into the heaps of deeds of his library research, into the lives of his “lieutenants,” into the very timbers and planks of those properties he saved. I cannot bear anonymity for this boy of ours—and though he’d reached his early 40s, “a boy” is what he’ll always seem to me, to someone my age. You will find his name on no plaque at any of the over 57 homes and public edifices he helped us spare. Just the names of original builders, of founding farmers, mayors, owners, and, of course, the time-tested family names of those prosperous, bored “widow women” who became Tad Worth’s funding and phoning army. But on what marble tablet do we find Theodore Hunstable Worth’s moniker engraved?

Let that start here. Call this “a personal indulgence,” but telling Tad’s particular truth also presents a chore of excruciating difficulty. I was once asked to speak—extemporaneously!—at the funeral of a woman who had worked for my family for 49 years. All I know is that I managed to say something. That in itself seemed feat aplenty. Here, at least, I have the blessing of silence, shelter, and revision. So I am going to take my jolly good time if that’s all right. It’s odd, but I feel my whole life has been a preparation for doing just this. Which is maybe why I feel so nervous about overstaying, overstating. Tad inspires overstatement, and perhaps demands it! If only I could find a prose style as modest, upright, and human in scale as the Federal architecture Tad loved best. That’s what I intend here: to make one little Doric temple on a hill for him.

For the record, Tad gave me the first job I ever had, apart from Wife and Mother and Friend, and all that those massive duties entail. Such tasks were precisely what women of my generation expected. But certain energies always went untapped. Precisely in not being asked after, many skills remained undescribed, and therefore went unknown. Tad believed in my “structural integrity” at a time when this rickety old structure sorely doubted she would stand for one more day.