Originally published: . Volume 12, No. 3. Source pages: 2.
I met Tom Hannie in 1978 when I was a graduate student and he led the legislative efforts in Louisiana to remove the requirement that psychologists must consult with physicians.
Some years later, I picked up the phone and found Tom on the other end, reading me the riot act about some delinquency he caught in one of my reports. I listened (of course he was right–Tom was always right), admitted my mistake, and pledged never to sin again.
“I’m satisfied with how you've handled this,” he said (I think he expected me to be defensive), and from that moment on we were friends.
It would have been easy to be intimidated by Tom Hannie. He was big and tall, with a baritone voice, and he exuded confidence. Clearly a dominant male, who seemed fearless, he was also gregarious, tolerant, and fun-loving. His lack of pretense was evident in his dress––he would wear baggy, leisure shirts and sandals. Tom was oddly free of narcissism.
Tom's intellectual ability was off the chart. He had a razor-sharp, analytical mind, and more than likely a photographic memory. (He gambled and was so good at it he was barred from casinos.) Suzie Andrews said that Tom had forgotten more psychology than the rest of us have known, and she is right. Tom gravitated to forensic psychology because it gave him some small challenge and because he enjoyed the crucible of facts debated and condensed down until all that was left was the essence of the truth.
His politics were abstract. Tom was a card carrying member of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the Baton Rouge Freethinkers.
So, it was in 2009, during the political fragmenting of our profession, that Tom and I found ourselves, together, in the rarefied air of The First Amendment.
He took a particular interest in the Times. He sometimes helped me report on news, and actually wore "a wire" to a government meeting. He insisted that I read H.L. Mencken, the 1930s journalist whose pyrotechnic use of language and irreverent style outraged hypocrites and politicians of that day. Tom laughed with me when I had to add "opinion" to the editorial page banner so readers would understand it wasn't "news." He applauded my efforts in unbiased reporting and entered all our contests. And, he said once––"There is nothing like the Psychology Times," high praise from someone like Tom.
Tom understood the process–that free speech and debate lead to truth, and that the tensions caused must be tolerated in order to burn away biases, irrelevancies, and false beliefs. He knew that free speech leads to freedom of thought, and free thought, to speech.
Tom also knew, as Thomas Paine said, "When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
Tom Hannie supplied me with an oxygen hose when the lack of clean air became suffocating. Always with Tom I could take a deep breath of liberty. He cannot be replaced – not ever – and I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.