2016-2017 Newsletter
The NEWSLETTERHistory For Alumni and Friends, Department of History, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ISSUE NO. XXXXV, 2016-2017 TOM Thomas C. Kennedy, 1937-2017 emember what the other Tom told his ma? “I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when Rthey’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.” We suspect our Tom will be found in those same precincts. Professor emeritus Tom Kennedy died this past January but hasn’t gone anyplace far. Few around here are as fondly or vividly recalled by alumni and colleagues. And no one’s name is as frequently invoked when there’s some injustice to be decried—whether cosmic or collegiate. Long the senior member of History’s Ohio delegation, Tom Kennedy was born in Dayton on September 25, 1937. “Raised in an Irish-American tribe,” Tom declared himself to have been “well-educated, in so far as he was willing to cooperate, in good Catholic institutions, where he learned to love history and literature but, alas, to The Class of 1967: David Sloan, Tom Kennedy, dislike, beyond arithmetic, all things connected to mathematics.” He earned a BA and David Edwards from the University of Dayton and subsequently spent two years with the Army’s 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment out on the frontlines of the Cold War (which, to Tom’s satisfaction, remained on ice for the duration of his service).
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