Nash, Tom

Boyhood friend of Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain"). Originally hearing, Nash became deaf when the two were skating on the frozen Mississippi River, the ice broke, and Nash fell in; the exposure led to a series of diseases, ending in scarlet fever that left him very deaf. Clemens lost contact with Nash for 55 years, but in 1902 ran into him at the Hannibal, MO train station, and recognized Nash immediately.