Tobin John Lathrop
Born: Nov. 25, 1967, St. Louis, MO
Died: Oct. 12, 2020
Married: Christina O'Sullivan Aug. 13, 1994
Child:
Charles
Ahnentafel:
1. Tobin
2. John Lathrop
4. Forrest Lathrop
5. Mildred Shelton
6. John Downey
7. Frances Tobin
8. Joel Lathrop
9. Louisa Dove
Tobin is survived by wife Christina and son Charles, his parents John & Peggy (Downey) Lathrop, brother Joel (Felicia) Lathrop and nephew Jacob and niece Amanda.
From the Seattle Scrabble Club:
I'm sad to let you know that Tobin Lathrop, former Seattle Scrabble member, died last week from pancreatic cancer. He was 52.
Donations to Tobin's memory can be sent to the American Cancer Society.
Tobin was one of the first people I met when I started coming to club. He really enjoyed the game and it was a pleasure to play with him. -- Rebecca Slivka
I remember Tobin was well-liked by the club, liked everyone in the club and had no qualms about playing blue or white cards. He purely enjoyed playing Scrabble.
Tobin and I have warm happy memories with the Seattle Scrabble club and the friends we made in our Cascadian and occasional National (Canada & US) championship tournaments. -- Christina O'Sullivan
Tobin was such a friendly and happy person. He seemed so comfortable in his own skin. I am very sorry to hear he has passed at such a young age. My sincere condolences to Christina and family. -- Jane Bissonnette
YOU SAY YOU WANT TO MEET SOMEONE funny, smart, and sweet; you want a lover who’s good with words. I’ll tell you right now: You can leave the bar scene behind. Come with me instead to the Seattle Scrabble Club (SSC), which meets every Tuesday at 6:15 p.m. at FareStart Restaurant. Here, the hyperarticulate or at least the very good spellers can hook up according to their own orthographic rules.
Just ask Christina O’Sullivan. She met her husband, Tobin Lathrop, in an online Scrabble forum nearly 12 years ago; today they live in Seattle with their “Scrabble spawn,” 2-year-old Chas. It seems an affinity for word games can bridge even the widest gaps, since O’Sullivan was a student in Vancouver, B.C., when she first encountered Lathrop, who lived in St. Louis. “[Tobin] and I met . . . on these online hangouts, or multiuser domains,” O’Sullivan explains. “He and I used to play these very long Scrabble games . . . it was just a way to occupy ourselves and talk.” Things really began to heat up, she says, when Lathrop “bought the hardcover copy of the second edition of The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary, and he started playing these obscure two- and three-letter words against me, and I felt I had to keep up.”
Offline, the two have been SSC members since the mid-’90s. O’Sullivan maintains that the SSC includes many “young singles” among its members. . . .
Notwithstanding the shortage of available singles in the room that night (like that extra “H” you so desperately need to spell “chthonic” for 87 points), the O’Sullivan-Lathrop clan is proof that Scrabble can lead to relationships. But if the SSC is a hit-or-miss prospect for logophiles, where else should a hot-to-trot Scrabble fan look for love? O’Sullivan recommends the group that meets at 3 p.m. every Sunday at Third Place Commons; she also cites the Scrabble Meetup at the Elysian Brewing Co., which takes place at 8 p.m. on the second Wednesday of every month. It’s Seattle’s premier Scrabble mixer, O’Sullivan reports: “Lots of single people there.”
But if you go looking for a mate at the Meetup, please avoid using lines like “Nice rack!” and “Did you know they changed the alphabet? They put U and I together.” So how do you charm an experienced Scrabbler? Pull out an anagram puzzle, advises O’Sullivan, and watch your crush’s mind whir into action. NEOTERIC and ISOMETRIC always seem to break the ice.
No comments:
Post a Comment