Chance

Eldon Bowman says it was "happenstance" that Gordon Wicks, his brother in law, invited the family out from Redondo Beach to their Altadena home for dinner that night, and that they spontaneously decided to take a hike while that dinner was being prepared.

His 50 years of anguish over Tommy, who disappeared on a spur-of-the-moment hike into the Arroyo Seco while that dinner was cooking, was best explained to me by Weston DeWalt in his Pasadena office.

It's like that first moment of panic when you realize your child is unaccounted for, he explains, has never gone away after 50 years.

I'm going to visit Eldon tomorrow morning to take him some copies of Monday's paper and the story about Tommy.