It is with great sorrow that Frater Thomas K. Markham of the Gamma Delta Chapter University of Miami passed away on November 28, 2021 after suffering from a very long illness.
I first met Tom in the fall of 1971 while we lived on the 4th floor of Mahoney Hall at the University of Miami. We quickly became the best of friends. Where ever he went I went. Wherever I went… he went. Tom was larger than life. He loved Jim Morrison and the Doors and knew every word of every Doors’ song. Soon I became a Doors’ fan.
Tom grew up in Darien, Connecticut and the summer before our sophomore year
I visited him at his home and met his mom, dad and sister Katherine. But the fun part of that vacation was hanging out with his friends Kevin, Jay and Sully who he often spoke about. We went to the Twin Towers in NYC, drove to New Haven, Connecticut and attended the Doors and Kinks concert at the Yale Bowl and partied in NYC on New Year’s Eve, bringing in 1972.
We drove down to the “U” at the start our sophomore year. I remember getting pulled over on Highway 17 because the car was weaving. Tom’s car didn’t have power steering and we were towing a U Haul. Fortunately, the state trooper didn’t see the empty cans of beer we drank the day before and let us go.
The fall semester of ’72 we lived a few doors down from each other on the fourth floor of Eaton Hall. I was pre-med and Tom was pre-law. He would have made a brilliant attorney. The following spring Tom was living at the Teke House and he invited me over to meet the guys as I was interested in intramural sports…. He and I pledged Teke and in the spring of ’73 and I ended up coaching the flag football team in the fall and Tom gave me the nickname Ara Par Havsy after Ara Parseghian, the head coach of Notre Dame.
Though Tom and I went our separate ways academic-wise, we always remained good friends while at college. He was an avid audiophile. He had the first room on the right-hand side as you walked up the stair case. I remember his BSR turntable… Sony amplifier… JBL 15-inch speakers… cranking out the Doors… all state of the art. We were all schooled by Tom how to handle vinyl records.
After graduating from the “U” in 1975, I went off to medical school. Tom and I grew out of touch as is often the case when you graduate, but out of the blue around 2015, I got an email from Tom. He must gotten my email address from the Teke directory. We exchanged phone numbers, and I remember the first time we spoke it was for close to three hours and it seemed like yesterday when I last spoke to Tom. His voice hadn’t changed one bit. We spoke several times, and then lost touch until 2019. Tom’s health issues started taking a turn for the worst, and our contacts became less and less frequent.
Sometime in the mid-70s or early 80s, Tom worked for his father’s publishing house and eventually worked in the medical field becoming very successful selling anatomical models to the healthcare industry.
Because of Tom, I reconnected with our former Prytanis Dennis Lingle.
Tom was quite the character. There are a lot of things that we did as college students and fraternity brothers that are better left unsaid, but I am a better person for having Tom as a friend.
Tom is survived by his life partner Leslie and his son Jack who lives in Tennessee.
Gamma Delta 279
January 18, 2022
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