Thomas Peter McKenna

1941 - 2022

Thomas Peter McKenna
February 14, 1941 - November 4, 2022
THOMAS PETER MCKENNA, father, grandfather, husband, financier, gourmand, traveler and lifelong student of philosophy and religion, died peacefully in his San Francisco home on Friday, November 4, 2022 (age 81).
Born in 1941 in West Hempstead, NY to Dr. Carl and Mary McKenna and raised on Long Island, Tom went on to attend Georgetown University, earning a B.A. in Philosophy and developing a lifelong interest in eastern and western religious psychology.
After graduating, he went to work on Wall Street for Chemical Bank as a security analyst while also attending NYU Business School to sharpen his business acumen. He then moved to Oppenheimer & Company in the late 1960's where he covered many important clients as an institutional salesperson.
Always an avid traveler, the mid-70s sparked a love affair with San Francisco, causing a spontaneous move there from New York City in 1975. He worked for Montgomery Securities throughout the 1980s before transitioning to hedge fund management, first with Julian Robertson of Tiger Management, and then eventually settling into a successful long-term role as portfolio manager at Osterweis Capital Management where he, along with co-manager Charlotte Hughes, produced an outstanding record with the Daedalus and Icarus funds. Tom's tendency with stocks, companies and collective psychology was "to not believe the hype." He was an expert at spotting blindspots, phony accounting, bubbles and other manifestations of overvaluation in the market.
Tom's personal life was marked by a keen passion for discovery. He began a love affair with European culture and Romance languages early in his life, following in the footsteps of his idol Ernest Hemingway to San Sebastián, Spain in the early 1960s where he also seized the opportunity to run with the bulls in Pamplona. He followed up those early adventures with near-annual trips to the United Kingdom and France in the latter part of his life, as well as trips to South America and India to study philosophy and temple art & architecture.
As a philanthropist, he was deeply concerned with the erosion of classical humanities education. Based on that commitment, he endowed a chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at his alma mater, Georgetown University, that is currently held by Professor Brandon Dotson. He was also an avid follower of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats, attending the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, Ireland with his cousin, Hofstra Professor Emerita and Irish Literature expert Maureen O'Rourke Murphy.
Tom is predeceased by his beloved wife Julia Garrett Schmidt McKenna, brother Brian McKenna and sister Michaela McKenna. He is survived by his sisters Sheila and Mary (Missy) McKenna, his brother Mark McKenna, his two sons Christopher McKenna (son of his first wife, Kathleen Hudson McKenna) and Ryan McKenna (son of Julia McKenna), and his granddaughter Ana Cowan McKenna. In later life, Tom developed an interest in supporting the development of new and more effective approaches to the treatment of substance abuse disorders. To that end, donations in his memory can be made to the Apollo Pact: https://www.apollopact.org/donate.