Deceased October 28, 2019
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In Memory
Thomas Park Gilliss was born in New York City on Aug. 16, 1948, to James Melville Gilliss and Edith Park Daniels. He died on Oct. 28, 2019, in San Francisco, Calif., in the presence of his wife, daughter and son. Tom’s early life was notable for the loss of his father and mother at a young age, motivating him to become the legal adoptive guardian to his younger sisters.
Admission Dean Wilson got it right when he selected Tom for the class of 1970. I met him in the late summer of 1966 at pre-season football practice, and we became close friends. Tom came from Rippowam High School in Stamford, Conn. He was smart, athletic and thoughtful. He never said anything that he didn’t think over at least twice. Both he and his eventual wife of 49 years, Catherine Lynch Gilliss, were model handsome: Cathy used to refer to him as her “trophy husband.”
One of my earliest memories of Tom is our standing in line, pooling loose change in front of the communal dormitory telephone. We lived at the Theta Delt fraternity and made the kind of lifelong friendships only possible in a small New England college during the chaos and radical change during the height of the Vietnam era. He came to Amherst an orphan and was a scholarship student as I was. We bussed tables in the dining hall, sold class rings and mugs, edited an alumni sports newsletter and ushered at basketball and hockey games.
After graduating Amherst cum laude and Catholic University as editor of the law review, Tom joined Arent Fox Kinter Plotkin & Kahn and later Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft before founding Gilliss & Valla. Eventually Cathy took a position as dean of the Yale School of Nursing, and Tom came to New Haven and practiced law in my office for several years.
Tom personified the ability to think critically that Amherst taught us, but most of all, he could listen carefully and address a problem or issue with perception and only after serious deliberation. After listening to his son, Brian Gilliss ’01, talk about a new girlfriend he had seen for about six weeks leading up to his Amherst graduation, Tom suggested that Brian could stay on the East Coast after college to pursue a relationship with Molly Burnett ’02, rather than returning home to San Francisco. Brian and Molly married five years later. Tom’s greatest joy was spending time with his five grandchildren. He spent his last years teaching them to swim at his home in Glen Ellen, Calif., and cheering at sporting events. He is also survived by his wife of 49 years, Catherine Lynch Gilliss; daughter Edith Megan Gilliss and son Brian Matthew Gilliss ‘01.
I saw him last in May, and he and Cathy were planning to attend our 50th reunion. We talked often, at a distance, about everything, and he left us before either was ready to stop. Like all of us, I always thought he was beyond the reach of mortality.
Jonathan J. Einhorn ’70 and Brian Gilliss ’01