Well … Tad was, as we can attest, a jack-of-all-trades. Having been so philanthropic with his smallish trust fund so early on, he fairly well had to be. During his 43 years, he worked in various unlikely roles to support his overriding concern for Preservation, supporting, only incidentally, himself. He would’ve cringed on hearing our lieutenant governor’s graveside mention of how Tad spent his own inheritance saving houses he then practically gave away to others, homes he never really lived in except to work on them. Tad was briefly a garden designer, specializing in period herbal and knot gardens (before they became a fad, so cutesied up). Then he owned a profitable business which recast old sundials, garden statuary, and obelisks. But daily management was something he mostly left to others. This allowed Tad time to drive his pickup on secondary Carolina roads, seeking vine-covered subjects for “mere salvation,” his dachshund always in back, barking at all chickens and most trees. Tad was a sought-after caterer (though that sounds too menial for somebody who came in and cooked for his friends and later sort of permitted them to slip him a little something oblique if princely). His softshells—dipped in lime juice, then battered with crumbled pecans and sautéed—were truly not to be missed. He acted as a paint contractor and period consultant for Tryon Palace and other such sites. But never Historic Williamsburg, a bête noire he never tired of “dishing.” Tad didn’t consider their scholarship serious and called them “the Walt Dig-nys.” Forever strong in his likes and dislikes, our Tad. He did a lot of things quietly well. Tad always assumed that everybody else could, too. Well, everybody else can’t, actually. But young Mr. Worth never ceded his amateur standing; Jefferson remained his god. The 18th-century’s farmer-statesman-gourmand-classicist-architect was Tad’s long-range ideal, and therefore his daily yardstick and reality. And though half the world still genuflects to Jefferson’s undoubted genius, Tad was something that Mr. Jefferson never ever thought to try to be: I mean that our plumpish, rosy Theodore Worth stayed, to the end, a very very funny person. And even Tad admitted, “Marse Jefferson was, if not all things, then most. But nobody ever did accuse him of being exactly a laugh riot.”

It is important to stay realistic about one’s mentors.

Can you hear me trying?