by Ben Owens, Grandson of Founder Doyle Owens

Tommy Hurst was a truck driver and company ambassador for Unclaimed Baggage for over two decades. Tommy passed away on January 20th, and he is greatly missed by many here. Ben Owens, grandson of Unclaimed Baggage founder, Doyle Owens, shares some fond memories in honor of Tommy's well-lived life...

For as long as I can remember, Tommy Hurst was known to me by only one name: Mr. Tommy. If you knew him, you’d understand why. "Mr. Hurst" was too formal, and "Tommy," for many of us, didn’t quite do justice to a man we viewed as "humbly mythical."

I don’t think I ever knew where exactly he was born, but he didn’t sound to me like he was from Alabama, though he was; not that it mattered. To me, Mr. Tommy was, first and foremost, a man of the road.

When I was little, he let me ride shotgun in his truck—not a Mack, or a Peterbilt, but his preferred Volvo. This was where he thought most of his thoughts, slept most of his nights, and chewed most of his gum, and even though my ride-alongs with him were much shorter than his usual long hauls across the United States, it felt like I was entering someone’s home—a clean, efficient home where the bed was made and the fridge was stocked with ice cold cans of Diet Coke—and I felt honored to be invited in.

To call him a skilled tradesman would be an understatement. I’d often stand at the loading dock as he backed up a fifty-three-foot trailer, aligning its edges with the dock to form a perfect seal—down to the quarter inch—without a single correction. That’s how good he was. I always admired that level of precision. 

Kindness and generosity were what many of us remember Mr. Tommy for most. He was perpetually youthful, the kind of person I only ever remember being one age, and it’s no exaggeration to say he always had a smile on his face. I didn’t realize then how much of that smiling was through pain—back pain, mostly, as I later learned—the thorn in the flesh of many truck drivers.

Despite numerous physical setbacks over years, Mr. Tommy was never one to complain. On the contrary, his positive, “can-do” attitude permeated everything he did. Often unassisted, he would regularly pack a full tractor trailer all the way to the ceiling with luggage and drive it across the country, and when he didn’t have another trailer waiting for him, it wasn’t unusual to see him unloading that luggage all by himself.

There are people who are punctual, and then there was Mr. Tommy, who you might say was “proactively punctual”. Barring an act of god, you could always count on him to not only be there on time, but to leave on time. For Mr. Tommy, though, “on time” meant “early”, and that’s something you learned to plan around if you worked with him.

I’m reminded of a quote from the wizard Gandalf in the first installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy: “A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” A fellow Unclaimed Baggage employee discovered how much this sentiment applied to Mr. Tommy when, one morning, having been told the truck would leave at 5:30 a.m., the employee arrived at 5:29—only to find Mr. Tommy had already left at 5:05.

Mr. Tommy knew time was precious, and he made the most of the time he was given. His reliability, positive attitude and warm demeanor made him someone you wanted to be around, and someone you wanted to be your best for. His spirits were always a rising tide, lifting the spirits of those around him.

When he arrived at an airline partner’s dock, he was never empty-handed. Often he brought fresh produce he picked up along the way, and it was always a welcome treat. In reference to my dad Bryan (our CEO), a longtime Unclaimed Baggage business partner once said on behalf of her company, “We love Bryan… but we really love Tommy.” She regaled tales of enormous watermelons and other delectables from the fertile grounds of North Alabama that Mr. Tommy often brought them, along with his heart-warming smile.

Mr. Tommy didn’t take that admiration for granted. Perhaps surprisingly, cross-stitching became his go-to hobby on the road, a quiet and meticulous pastime that suited him well, and he often gifted his creations to people whose lives had touched his.

Several years ago, he gave my family one such cross-stitch that he, a part-time pastor and man of strong faith, had cross-stitched with a Bible verse that was especially meaningful to him, Isaiah 40:31: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk, and not faint.”

I take comfort in the thought that now, his strength has been renewed. That he is no longer weary, but soaring down the great supernal highway.