We lost one of our own recently, and as one of our own I mean within the Walls & Ceilings family. Robert Thomas who wrote the column, “The Finish Line,” passed away, and while he was certainly more than an industry icon, he was beloved by the entire staff of Walls & Ceilings magazine. We all know he was the guru for EIFS, he started with Dryvit in the heyday and helped make EIFS a household name in this country. He chaired ASTM committees, ran seminars, wrote books (even a cookbook). He was kind of a renaissance man and he might have been the most interesting man in the world.
I first met Robert (“Bob”) Thomas in the 1990s, when we both were in Seattle. He would invite a group of us to sit on his large boat to watch the yacht races on Lake Union as he prepared dinner. His stories were always entertaining and the food was delicious. He lived on his boat, and if you knew him—that was Bob, living life the way some of us only dream of. I had only envisioned living on a boat, while he would actually do the things most us did not have the courage to try and venture out on.