Thomas L. Rourke ’57

“A wonderful man” is Al Staley’s description of Thomas L. Rourke, his roommate for three years.

Tom died May 2, 2019. Troy, N.Y., a one-time manufacturing hub on the Hudson River, was his birthplace, longtime residence, and workplace. He attended Deerfield Academy. At Princeton he majored in English and was a member of Theatre Intime and Colonial Club. Employed in the trust department of a Troy bank, Tom studied at night, earning a master’s degree in elementary education at Russell Sage College in Troy.

He taught remedial reading in Troy under a federal government grant for 11 years. In 1976 he wrote in our 25th-reunion yearbook that multiple sclerosis had forced him to retire from classroom teaching. He then worked in the library of an elementary school for two years, “when I retired completely.”

Earlier, he was a lieutenant in the New York State National Guard and a member of the boards of Vanderheyden Hall, the Rensselaer County Chapter of the Red Cross, and the International Talc Co. He was a communicant of St. Francis de Sales Church in Troy.

Tom is survived by his longtime companion, Dorothy Taylor Howley, and her four children; a sister; and several nieces and nephews.