BALTIMORE — Tom Longest can’t be left alone. Can’t cook an egg, sometimes can’t find the right words to say, but we can.
This man was climbing the ladder of success, until he fell off and suffered a traumatic brain injury. This is brain injury awareness month and Brian Pugh, the executive director of the Brain Injury Association of Maryland (not in its 40th year), says there are over a half a million Marylanders who suffer just like Longest.
Longest met his wife at Nationwide Nissan. She worked the showroom floor and he was a salesman.
They would go on to marry, start their own audio visual company, and have two boys.
One day, Longest took the steps up a ladder and was four feet off the ground when he fell. He knew he had bruises and everything, but he didn’t think it would lead to what it became.
In church singing with the choir one second, the next he is cursing people out at the hospital. He would not be the same person again.
His days of earning a six figure salary were over. The family was broke.
Then one day at Sinai while doctors are looking over his brain waves, Longest was thinking about frequency waves.
It led to him inventing Signal Safeguard. It’s a box where you put your cell phone in when you visit places like the Pentagon or the White House, so you won’t be hacked or spied on.
Now even as his brain is busted, his heart continues to pour into American Legion Post 2 in Hampden. He wants to help our veterans.
