Tom Boyden

1943 - 2025

Tom Boyden
08/08/1943 - 01/16/2025
Remembering Tom Boyden, athlete, coach, community volunteer, and FSM veteran.

Lifetime Berkeley-Oakland resident Tom Boyden, 81, died at home on January 16 after a long illness, surrounded by his family.

Born during the Second World War, Tom was the son of Ruth, an early childhood music teacher, and David, a Cal music professor. They lived in an old brown shingle redwood house on Shattuck Avenue, across the street from Live Oak Park.

Tom was known as a loyal friend – serious, impulsive, and funny. At an early age he developed an intense, lifelong interest in sports – both as an athlete and fan – especially when the Giants came to town in the late 50s. Tom was also a die-hard Cal fan, who attended nearly every home Cal football game for 60 years. He won a city tennis championship on the old Berkeley High courts on Milvia in 1959 and combined his involvement with athletics and high academic performance – he was a National Merit Scholar – as sports editor of the old Berkeley High Daily Jacket ("Monarch of the High School Dailies.")

As a Cal student in 1964, Tom participated in the Free Speech Movement, being one of the over 800 students who sat in at Sproul Hall and were then arrested and hauled away to Santa Rita County Jail, in one of the largest peacetime busts in American history. After graduating, Tom married Karen, his life partner, who survives him. Tom and Karen have two children Darren and Jenny, and four grandchildren, Julia, Joseph, Naomi, and Elias. He is also survived by his brother Richard, sisters-in-law Carol and Rosie, brothers-in-law Rich and Jerry, niece Erin, and nephews David and Cullen.

Tom distinguished himself as a youth baseball coach and was a founder and long-time active leader of North Oakland Little League. Later, Tom was a baseball coach at Bishop O'Dowd and Las Lomas high schools. Tom was also a skilled craftsman who built beautiful wood furniture, a dollhouse, and a treehouse for his grandchildren. In retirement, he volunteered for a local senior service organization, enjoyed building and operating model planes and trains, and spent countless hours on the fields rooting on his grandchildren at their various sporting events.

If you would like to honor Tom's legacy with a donation to the North Oakland/South Oakland Little League scholarship fund, please visit go.dojiggy.io/tom-boyden.