ABOUT TOM

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan

A Conversation with Tom Seeman

What inspired you to write about your childhood in the projects and share your coming-of-age story in Animals I Want to See  

Tom Seeman:  “When I was thirteen years old, I could have killed someone—I don’t mean hypothetically. It was 1972, just past dusk, days after Halloween, and with three of my friends, I was heaving pumpkins, jack-o’-lanterns we’d swiped from strangers’ yards, off a bridge and into traffic. Exploding onto the highway below us, those pumpkins ignited a ruckus of swerving and honking, which reasonably could have caused someone to die. At the time, we were making a statement: even kids from the projects can be powerful. Years later, I realized that the bridge we were standing on was a metaphor. On the one side of it loomed prison and despair. On the other, freedom, pleasure, and the untold treasures that come from living a purposeful life. I could have gone either way. Thanks to the kindness of neighbors, teachers, and strangers, and my own determination, I defied the odds. I wrote Animals I Want to See as a personal testament and a reminder that everyone has a choice, no matter their circumstances. I also hope to inspire others to look beyond social class, skin color, and statistics, and do something kind for someone who just might be on that bridge.”

You grew up in a battered, cockroach-infested house owned by the Housing Authority in one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Toledo, Ohio. Why do you describe Bronson Street as a place you remember fondly?       

Tom Seeman: “I moved to Bronson Street from other projects in East Toledo when I was seven and as a child exploring the gnarly field behind our house, I saw wild beauty and treasures waiting to be discovered. Butterflies, grasshoppers, a car tire with roly-polies beneath it. My first pet—a garter snake. Despite the roaches that had greeted us, our house seemed like paradise. It had five bedrooms for the twelve of us (our family would soon grow to fourteen), which meant that my brother Ernie and I would be sleeping by ourselves for the first time. Some of our neighbors were welcoming and many watched out for one another. On Bronson Street, I found a sense of community, though, of course, there were many difficulties too. Bronson Street became my home and helped to make me the person I am today.”

As a blond-haired boy, you were a minority in your neighborhood. How did living in the mostly Black projects in the ‘60s and ‘70s shape your views on race?  

Tom Seeman: “Even at the age of seven, I understood that tension and separation existed between Black people and white people. I’d noticed that the four white families in the projects lived clustered next to each other on our block, even if I didn’t understand why. But on the day we moved in, it was the Nobles, a Black family who lived in another project house across the street, who knocked on our door and welcomed us to the neighborhood. As a boy in 1968, the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and race riots erupted all over the country, I was too young to grasp the depth of the snippets I heard on the news. When I asked my mother about why people were being so violent, she told me they were angry. And when I asked, ‘About what?’ She said, ‘It’s complicated.’ My boyhood friend Jeffrey was Black, and when I asked him about the anger and the fighting, he opened my eyes to the injustices experienced by Black Americans, and I began to understand why my mom had used the word complicated. Race relations in America remain tense, and the issue is complicated. Yet, growing up surrounded by Black people, I believe it could be less complicated if we all saw one another as people, equal members of the human race. Though I worked hard for the success I have, I wonder if the same doors would have opened for me if I’d been Black.”      

By your own account, you have always worked hard for your successes. Would you tell us about how you developed your work ethic?  

Tom Seeman: “Shortly after we moved to Bronson Street, my four older siblings and I were enrolled in St. Vincent’s, the private school at our church. Mom had told us we’d have to work in exchange for free tuition, emphasizing it was a small price to pay for a good education. When I was ten and a devoted altar server, the parish priest was so impressed by the way I cleaned up ‘holy vomit’ (puke with remnants of Eucharist, which had to be dissolved with reverence) in church that he asked me if I’d like to take on a summer job with ‘a lot of responsibility.’ It marked the start of my childhood career as a school janitor. When Father Schmelzer offered me my first real job, I didn’t think about giving up huge swaths of my summer playtime or about whether I would get paid anything at all (I wouldn’t) or about how much work it would be (a lot). What I thought was how lucky I was to be asked to do such a special job. I took pride in knowing that Father Schmelzer saw something special in me. Being trusted with responsibility at that age made a lasting impression.”        

How did being the fifth-born child of twelve fuel your quest for excellence?         

Tom Seeman: “My relentless drive to be the best was tied to my longing for recognition and approval. Though I was the fifth child, I always wanted to be first. Calling dibs was how matters were often decided in our family; it was the only peaceful way we’d found to designate who got what. This hunger remained constant throughout grade school and prep school. I was always the first to raise my hand to answer the teacher’s question or volunteer for an assignment. All my years of extracting approval from teachers and coaches, friends, and their families, couldn’t take the place of what I most yearned for: to hear my mother say she was proud of me. Even admitting that now wakes up the shame-angel in me, the one who sits on my shoulder and points accusingly at my face. Isn’t that petty? The shame-angel says. Didn’t she do enough for you? Wasn’t she miraculous enough? And though the answer must always be yes, as the fifth of twelve children, I couldn’t help but long for things that were impossible. I still do.” 

You dedicate Animals I Want to See to your mother, Virginia Seeman, and as described in your book, she sounds like a remarkable woman and, yes, complicated. Would you tell us about her?  

Tom Seeman: “My mother was an artist and a romantic, a dutiful Catholic and a pragmatist. Whether faced with dirty diapers, tending to dog bites, stretching a cut of meat, or my father’s stinging remarks, she was unflappable, a seemingly endless well of calm, and responded to most things, good or bad, matter-of-factly. There were a few times in my childhood when I felt the desire to lie down and rest my head in her lap, but we never did things like that—no one in our family even hugged or said I love you, not even on special occasions. Once, after we had lost the pet dog I cherished, I expressed the desire for a hug. A few days later, she came into the room I shared with my brother. Ernie was out, and I was lying on our bed reading. She sat down beside me and then did something she’d never done before: she patted my back—an awkward combination of a pat and a slap delivered in rapid succession between my shoulder blades. I didn’t know what to do in this uncharted territory of touch, which felt kind of good and kind of odd. Mom’s language of affection was spoken through her hard work in keeping the family ship afloat. Her love lived in the magic she wove into the tapestry of the ordinary, so that we could grow up in the projects rarely noticing that we were poor, and seldom feeling sad. And though we’re not an emotionally effusive family, one thing I learned while I was writing this book is that every one of my siblings sees Mom as a hero.”       

In Animals I Want to See, you reflect on struggling with many of the details of your faith. Do you have conflicted feelings about Catholicism? 

Tom Seeman: “When I was an altar boy, I wanted to ask priests about so many things, about free will, about Hell, about rules, about whether our Guardian Angel is always watching us, and whether we can ever escape the eyes of heavenly beings. As I got older, I began to question why my mother, who followed the church’s teachings without question, kept having babies and why her thirteenth and last child, who was born dead, was sent to a place called Limbo. I am grateful to the Catholic Church for not only providing me with an outstanding education, which enabled me to get into Yale, achieve a perfect score on my LSATs, and go on to Harvard Law, but also for instilling me with values, from my work ethic to compassion.”                 

As statistics support, many people who are born in the projects die in the projects, too often after lives marked by crime and violence. How did you overcome the stigma attached to social class and poverty?    

Tom Seeman: “I thrived because people—teachers, coaches, priests, bosses, an aspiring Congressman, even strangers—made a decision to trust me. Each time someone trusted me with something costly, something important—whether operating a floor buffer or an alien-mower, whether I held the keys to a school or a car—it never failed to astound me. It was a trust that shimmered with potential and filled me with a humbling sense of awe and gratitude, because in many ways I felt branded by the projects, as if my place of origin were a birthmark anyone could see. Every time someone trusted me with something, I thought it was in spite of who I was, and not necessarily because of it. Gradually, the more others trusted me and the more I proved myself worthy of their trust, I came to trust my own ability to succeed.”   

Looking back at your youth, who would you like to thank for helping you along your journey to success?  

Tom Seeman: “We didn’t say thank you very much growing up. I don’t remember hearing any of the adults in my family saying it, or anyone in our neighborhood—not even the Nobles, who were the best across-the-street neighbors anyone could ask for. Maybe for those who are poor, the words thank you point, in an indirect way, to all that is lacking—a deficit that pulls on the threads of shame that people in need try to keep hidden. Or maybe it has something to do with pride and self-reliance—a need to resist having any need at all. Whatever the reason, those two words were not part of my daily vocabulary growing up. But if I could go back now, I would thank so many people, including Mrs. Willis, who nominated me for the Toledo Museum of Art classes; Lauren, my first art class teacher who doled out approval from what felt like an endless well; Mr. Barnett, a librarian at the Toledo Public Library in downtown Toledo who was always so happy to see me and who helped me with my work; Mrs. Lambert, who gave me my first paying job because she knew I needed it; and my uncles, who added so much to our young lives without us realizing it until it was too late.”

What would you most like readers to take away from Animals I Want to See?    

Tom Seeman: “Do something kind for a stranger. It’s the rule I try to honor every day. Some days it’s something small, like letting someone into my lane in traffic, and some days it’s something sizable, like creating a scholarship for undeserved kids in Toledo’s low-income communities to attend St. Francis, the school that gave me a scholarship and changed my life. Most days, my promise falls somewhere in between. Of all the promises I’ve made to myself over the years, all the lists and notebooks I’ve kept, all I’ve been taught in the highest institutions of education, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that every act of kindness, no matter how small, makes a difference.”