Tom Connell

Tom Connell is the fifth of six children in an Irish-Catholic family from Boston.  He attended public schools, graduating in 1967.  He was interested in most everything, but especially language, literature, drama, poetry and astronomy.  He received a full scholarship to Princeton University, graduating in 1971 with a degree in English literature, and a minor in Classics.

While in college, Tom wrote a senior thesis on the Jacobean playwright John Webster, of whom it was famously said: "Webster was much possessed by death/ And saw the skull beneath the skin." In that vein, Tom’s college yearbook said that his objective in life was "to beguile or throttle death." That goal has not changed — though with each succeeding year, it becomes more challenging.

After college, Tom taught English literature to high school students in Maryland for two years. He then spent three remarkably fulfilling years in the United States Peace Corps in very rural Afghanistan, at a time when that country was at peace.

In 1976, he returned home and enrolled in law school. For the next 35 years, he was a slave to the law, practicing for decades at a major international law firm. Somehow, he wriggled free of all that in January 2012, retired, and assumed human form again. He now spends his days walking to interesting places, telling stories, and finding traces of wisdom and humor wherever he can.