THOMAS TENTLER

1932 - 2021

Thomas N. Tentler  
Thomas Nathaniel Tentler died peacefully at home on Wednesday July 21, 2021. The cause was acute leukemia. Born October 25, 1932 in Evanston, Illinois, he lived in Chicago until he went to Harvard in 1950. He earned his graduate and undergraduate degree at Harvard University and went on to a long academic career as a Professor of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In his retirement he moved to Washington, DC when his wife, Leslie, joined Catholic University as a Professor of History. He is survived by Leslie, his wife of 49 years, his children Kate, Justin, Sarah, Daniel and Gregory, daughters-in-law Jasmine Kim and Jennifer Jolley, grandsons Jake, Thomas and Victor, 21 nieces and nephews and countless more great nieces and nephews. He was a man of enormous kindness and genuine interest in others. He found something to celebrate in everyone he knew and was incapable of favoritism (even though some of his children think there are clear winners). He had boundless patience for those in need, often staying on the phone with a troubled friend for hours on end, but none for the mispronunciation or grammatical misapplication of words. He was a deeply respected historian, an excellent cook, a great thinker, and a mentor and role model to students, colleagues, friends and his dozens of nephews and nieces. But above all, he was a husband, father and grandfather, as expert in those disciplines as in academia. He was kind, funny, and larger than life. Injustice in any form made him apoplectic, even after almost nine decades on the planet. None of us know yet how to live in a world without him. We can only try to emulate the very best of him. Funeral Services will be Saturday July 31, 2021 at 1 p.m. at St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill, 313 Second Street SE, Washington DC.