Who am I?

Who am I ?

By Thomas J. Wear – February 2, 2011

I am 57 years old, divorced for the second time. I am raising my four biological children Tracie, Tom, Christopher and Phoenix. My children are in descending order 40, 39, 33 and seven.

When I was 15 years old I met a woman who was three years older than me. After she slipped me a note at work we began dating. At 15 years old I had already been aware of women for some time. I therefore must take responsibility for pursuing her as much as she pursued me. Soon the things that happen, happened. My dear wife became pregnant. It’s not that we didn’t want that, as we had already run away once to try and get married.

My older brother Charles came with us on this trip. It is needless to say the trip was a complete disaster. We had to send home for money to get us back from Colorado to California, basically with our tails between our legs and embaressed.

Looking back on the situation now I know that I was desperate to get away from the situation I was in, A 15-year-old alone and on his own. The only person in my life that I had ever really known for sure that loved me had died the March of that year. I was definitely looking for a woman that would give me the love that I so greatly desired.

Getting married on June 14, 1969 was a terrific way for me to become emancipated and begin to show the world what I was really made of. April 16 of 1970, my first child Tracie was born. She was a fine healthy girl and she was beautiful. There was only one problem and that was that Carol had somehow become ill from complications of the pregnancy and delivering our first child.

Things were pretty tough during that period of time. As Carol was unable to work and I tried to make up for the lack of her income by working 19 to 20 hours every day with a nine hour day and a 10 hour day every weekend. However, we still managed to become pregnant again and soon my second born, Thomas William Wear was born on September 12, 1971.

I now found myself 18 years old with two children at home and I was the sole income for our young family of four. Thankfully my father was able to step in and help me obtain employment at the Southern Pacific Railroad. My father had been working for them for many years by this time and he had some pull. He was an officer of Southern Pacific (an assistant trainmaster).

In July of 1971 I found myself working for Southern Pacific and making decent money, a little over four dollars an hour as I recall. My wife Carol was in the position that she could stay home and take care of the children. This was perfectly fine by me as I was kind of old-fashioned minded.

I worked hard at the railroad and applied myself to learning everything I possibly could about my position as a Carman, responsible for repairing boxcars. I soon found myself being promoted. This brought with it a healthy raise to $4.22 an hour. Through the railroad I had insurance and many other benefits that a good union job at that time was able to give to their membership.

I continued to work hard and apply myself and soon found that I was working as a probationary car foreman. This also came with a raise in pay, however I’m not sure how much that was. This new job as a supervisor also carried with it responsibilities that most 21-year-olds probably wouldn’t have handled as well as I did.

Another year or so went by like this and I became a permanent car foreman. This gave me some stability and relief that had not really been present in my life up until then.

I eventually became a departmental car foreman. Whenever an assistant trainmaster was not available to work for any period of time the company would ask me to fill in. This meant that I was working a lot, but I was also making more money than I ever had before.

A few more years went by and my second son Jonathan Christopher Wear was born on March 18, 1977. Both Carol and I were a little surprised by the pregnancy, however our household was stable enough that we took it all in as a blessing.

I continued working for the railroad until around 1981 when I was injured on the job. That’s one thing about working for the railroad, if you are injured on the job you probably were hurt pretty badly. As I used to preach in my safety meetings to the people working for me, these railroad cars are made of metal and we are only made of flesh if it comes to a collision the railroad cars will always win.

My back was hurt and I found myself at Loma Linda University Medical Center having a procedure done to help repair the disk in my back that had ruptured. This procedure did not work very well. I was in severe pain and for a while there did not know whether I would be able to walk again or whether I would be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of my life. By the way, this was when I started to receive Percodan for pain relief.

I received a decent settlement from the railroad for my injuries. I used these monies to try and start a business of my own. This did not quite work out, but that’s for a later time. I struggled greatly for at least the next five years. trying to get through the haze that settled upon my life with the use of pain medications, alcohol, marijuana and any other drug I could take that I thought might make me feel better. This I feel now was not only to make me feel better physically but mentally as well.

Around 1990 my first wife and I divorced. My two older children were already out of the house and on their own with my youngest son Christopher staying with his mother.

In 1995 I met the woman who was to become my second wife. We got married on May 7, 2000. I felt that this time I was going to get it right. I felt the love for her that I had never felt for any other woman in my life. I just knew that she was the one that would stand by me and have my back no matter what happens and no matter how things went.

In the year 2003 my wife graduated her internship in medicine and we were on our way to eastern Tennessee where she would do her fellowship in cardiology. This was the year of great changes for myself, my wife and our lives together. On June 8, 2003 my daughter Phoenix was born at Cedars Hospital in Los Angeles California.

Two weeks after Phoenix was born my wife, my mother-in-law, my daughter Phoenix and myself were on our way cross country to eastern Tennessee to begin my wife’s fellowship in cardiology.

In 2006 she graduated her fellowship in cardiology and began to look for her first contract as a cardiologist in eastern Tennessee. She soon found herself working for a group that was attached to Mountain States Hospital Association which is one of the largest providers in the eastern Tennessee area. Her first contract was I think a pretty good one.

Suddenly we had gone from a family that had an income of about $50,000 a year, to a family making nearly 10 times more. In October of 2008 we could no longer seem to see eye to eye, on it seemed anything. My second divorce was finalized on May 1 of 2009.

So! To answer the original question, who am I? I am a two-time divorcee living in eastern Tennessee approximately 2500 miles from most of my family and striving to do the best I can for myself, my children, my ex-wives and everyone else who touches my life in anyway, and I am Charles’ brother.