CALVIN L. THOMAS

THOMAS Calvin L. Thomas (Age 86) Poet, veteran, State Department officer, beloved husband and father, died Wednesday, June 1, 2016, at home in Arlington, Virginia, surrounded by his family. The cause was colon cancer and complications from dementia. He is survived by his wife, Eden; seven children, Alan (Julia), Paul (Sarah), Margaret Trinity (Frank), Anne Weinberg (Adam), Jessica Dunn (Mark), Elizabeth and Youssef. He is also survived by his 10 grandchildren, Robbie, Carrita, Margaret, Luke, Nathan, Colin, Aidan, Clare, Abigail, and Nora, as well as his brother, Dudley. Thomas graduated from Horace Mann School in New York in 1947 and Yale University in 1951. He spent his sophomore summer with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College, where he met critics like Allen Tate and Yvor Winters. Thomas was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and was sent to West Germany to serve in the Defector Reception Center, a joint military and civilian intelligence operation, located near Frankfurt. In 1954, he went to Stanford University on a coveted poetry fellowship and studied there with Yvor Winters, receiving his Master's degree in English. His story, "The Repatriate", based on his experience interviewing German POWs, was published in Stanford Short Stories. Thomas travelled with his father, actor, Calvin Louis Thomas and played in summer stock, once alongside Sinclair Lewis. His mother, Margaret Mosier, was also an accomplished actor in New York. Vincent Price and John Raitt were among the co-stars Thomas met along the way. New York in the 30's and 40's was not without uncertainties for artists and when reviews came out, his father scanned them quickly to see how long the play, and his livelihood, would last. Despite early success as a poet, Thomas was uncertain about committing himself to poetry and financial uncertainty. He left his PhD unfinished, and capitalizing on fluent German, began his career at the State Department. His first wife, Jean Galloway, whom he had met at Stanford, boarded the USS Constitution with him bound for West Berlin. Thomas was there when the Wall went up overnight in 1961. He also served in Zagreb, and in Hamburg. In wartime South Vietnam, where he was assigned to the US consulate in Can Thó, he taught an English Literature evening class to students at Can Thó University. He enjoyed telling the story of a Horace Mann classmate, also in Vietnam, who kept a ten-foot-long pet python, loose, in their quarters. Thomas married Eden Brown in 1983, retired in 1988, and joined her on postings in Colombo, Bombay, Rabat, Paris, New Delhi and London. He was one of the first stay-at-home dads, supporting his wife and children as they moved 13 times. Thomas continued to write, winning the Jenny Moore prize and studying at Bread Loaf with John Gardner in the late 70's. A feature on his relationship with Yvor Winters was published in Poetry magazine in 2009, and his poem, "For a Girl Killed at Sea", originally published by Poetry in 1955, appears at: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/detail/calvin-thomas Among his accomplishments, he counted his children and grandchildren as the ones of which he was most proud. They will remember his love of literature, art, stamps, Yale, Graham Greene, coffee ice cream, birds...and his unbounded affection for them. Thomas was buried at The Fair Mount Cemetery in Chatham, New Jersey, on June 13, 2016. Services were under the direction of Cunningham Turch Funeral Home, Alexandria, VA. Memorial celebrations will be scheduled at a later date. Donations to fight dementia are welcomed at Walk to End Alzheimer's (act.alz.org/goto/clt). www.cunninghamfuneralhome.netwww.cunninghamfuneralhome.net