Dr. Thomas C. Childers Jr.

Dr. Thomas C. Childers, Jr., beloved husband, father, grandfather and professor, passed away on November 7, 2025 in Media, PA after a long illness. An acclaimed teacher, author, and speaker, Dr. Childers taught history at the University of Pennsylvania for 40 years and wrote several books on modern European history and World War II. He inspired countless students in his classes at Penn and through recorded lectures with The Great Courses. In his scholarly work he combined exacting historical research with a compelling narrative style that reached audiences well outside academia.
Thomas Clifford Childers, Jr. was born on December 10th, 1946, in Cleveland, Tennessee. He was the cherished only child of Thomas C. Childers, Sr., an electrician, and Mildred Goodner Childers, a homemaker. An exceptional athlete, he grew up playing baseball, basketball, and football, and also tap dancing, singing, writing articles for his grammar school newspaper, and painting. Upon graduation he was recruited to play football at several universities in the South and offered a minor league pitching contract, and following a semester at Tennessee Tech, he transferred to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. After injuries sidelined his football career and lackluster grades made him question his choice of an accounting major, he turned to a new passion, history, under the mentorship of Arthur Haas at Tennessee. He traveled to Germany to study language at the Goethe Institute in Passau and later returned to Mainz in 1969 when he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. He wrote his Master's Thesis on the Kreisau Circle, a group that met in secret to plan an assassination attempt on Hitler, after interviewing Countess von Moltke and other prominent figures in the group. This experience convinced him that he wanted to be a historian and he embarked on a lifelong career of teaching and scholarship on the history of Germany, and particularly the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War.
Thomas was accepted into the Ph.D. program at Harvard University and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife Betsy (Mayfield), whom he married in 1968, although they later divorced. He loved the academic and social life of graduate school and lived with friends in a rambling old house in Nahant on Massachusetts Bay. After his first year at Harvard his studies were interrupted by the Vietnam War draft and he was sent to basic training and Infantry Officer's School before being assigned to Army Intelligence. He felt fortunate to be spared combat duty in Vietnam and transitioned to the Ready Reserves, which enabled him to finish up his doctoral studies. Thomas earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976 and took up a position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for the next 40 years.
In 1981 Thomas married Barbara Blake and settled in Swarthmore, PA where his son Nicholas and daughter Ava were born and raised. While his marriage to Barbara ended, he was a devoted father and enjoyed coaching Little League and cheering on his children's activities. He had a distinguished academic career that included numerous acclaimed books, fellowships, and teaching appointments at Trinity Hall at Cambridge University and Smith College. At Penn he made lifelong friends who appreciated not only his scholarship but his humor and irreverence for academia, and mentored countless undergraduate and graduate students in history. He earned accolades for his teaching, including the Ira T. Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching (1987)
and the Senior Class Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2000), chosen by popular vote of the senior class at Penn.
His scholarly work took a more personal turn in 1995 when he published Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down Over Germany in World War II, about his uncle Howard, a navigator on the Black Cat. Childers continued to write in an accessible personal style with the next books in his World War II trilogy, In the Shadows of War, and Soldier from the War Returning. While working on the second book, a story about an American pilot who was sheltered by the French Resistance, he connected with Kristen Stromberg, who helped him interview former members of the French Resistance instrumental in the pilot's survival. Thomas and Kristen were married in Media in 2000 and lived in the Moylan-Rose Valley area for the next 25 years, welcoming their sons James and Timothy. He spent many happy hours with his sons going to the aquarium and zoo, riding trains, going to Reading Terminal Market and watching the Phillies in action.
In his free time he enjoyed fishing on the Delaware River and in Maine, cheering on his Tennessee Volunteers and Philadelphia Phillies, family vacations in the Outer Banks, and reading Dickens and Trollope. He was passionate about music, with eclectic tastes that included Puccini and Elvis, Broadway musicals, blues, rock, and country. He loved books and devoured novels, underlining favorite passages with his ever-present fountain pens. He and Kristen traveled and did research in Europe and spent evenings at home in their garden with their kids and dogs, talking and listening to the cicadas. Most of all he loved his family and supported his children in all their adventures as they grew up.
Dr. Childers retired from Penn in 2016, the same year he published his final book, The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Though he didn't get to enjoy the retirement he wished for, fishing and drinking gin and tonics on the porch, he kept his spirits up despite the increasingly difficult toll of neurodegenerative disease. He was grateful for his life experiences and especially his family, regularly expressing his love and appreciation for all his dear ones, and especially his wife Kristen, who became his full-time caregiver in his later years.
He is survived by his wife Kristen, his son Nicholas (Vanessa), daughter Ava (Tristan), and sons James and Timothy, as well as by his mother-in-law Jean and his granddaughters Sophia and Claire.
Family and friends are invited to a celebration of life service on Saturday, November 15th, 2025 at 10:00 am at Wallingford Presbyterian Church, Wallingford, Pennsylvania. A visitation/reception with family will follow the service. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the ACLU or the ASPCA.