Thomas Killin Dalglish

1939 - 2023

Thomas Killin Dalglish, 84, passed away peacefully on June 14, 2023, at the HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center in Providence. Tom was born on April 29, 1939, in New York, N.Y., to Esther Jane Parsons and James Garven Killin Dalglish.  He is survived by his wife of 31 years, Ellen J. Taylor, two sons, Pablo and Gabriel, his daughter, Hannah, four grandchildren (Ítalo, Apolo, Tainá, and Uma Yara), and many nieces and nephews. Tom is also survived by three brothers, Jamie, Campbell, and Malcolm Dalglish, and a sister, Meredith Dalglish.

Tom grew up in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and Carmel, Indiana, the eldest of five. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he was poet laureate of his class and spent a day walking in the woods with poet Robert Frost. He received a law degree from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of California at Berkeley, where his focus was the ethics of research involving human subjects.

Passionate about civil rights, he traveled to Mississippi in 1965 at the height of the movement to register voters, and was involved in school desegregation litigation with the NAACP Seattle chapter.

He lived for many years in Washington state, working as a university administrator and practicing law, before moving to Louisville, Ky., to act as director of the Office of Research Integrity at the University of Louisville. He later moved with his wife and daughter to Rhode Island and worked as a journalist for 15 years at East Bay Newspapers, writing for the Sakonnet Times. He was proud of the fact that he worked until the age of eighty.

Tom was a connoisseur of words, a talented chef, a prolific writer and a devoted dog-owner. He loved music, food and art from different cultures, and was endlessly curious. He forever carried a love of Brazilian culture and music from his time there on a fellowship in 1976. An avid outdoorsman in younger years, his greatest adventure was leading canoe trips through Ontario to the Hudson Bay.

There will be a celebration of life service on Saturday, June 24, 2023, at 10:30 a.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Providence, 1 Benevolent St., Providence. To honor Tom's commitment to the environment and to social justice, memorial donations may be made in his name to Save the Bay, 100 Save the Bay Drive, Providence, RI 02905, http://www.savebay.org or to Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104, https://www.splcenter.org.