CURRENT CELEBRATIONS

Thomas Walker

Thomas Francis Walker III, age 73 passed away at his private residence on May 28, 2025.  He was born on November 3, 1951 to Mary Alice and Thomas Walker II.

Tom was the kind of man you could not describe with one word.  He was a loner among a crowd, a generous, witty man who loved to read anything in print, loved history and travel. He enjoyed camping for the solitude and the outdoors.  He was  always on the outside looking in but when he jumped into anything be it a conversation or writing, it was with profound wit and passion.In the late 1970s, Tom was a reporter for the Passaic Herald News, in New Jersey, breaking stories from City Hall while working to unionize the editorial staff. He joined the overnight copy desk of The Bergen Record in 1980, quickly establishing himself as a top wordsmith and clever headline-writer. He would eventually join the dayside reporting staff and write memorable features, not least of them a Page One account of one highway’s role in creating North Jersey’s postwar suburbs — this while mentoring new hires to the editorial staff. He would then work briefly at Crain’s New York business magazine before  joining the Wall Street Journal as a copy editor tasked with writing the front-page Worldwide column, a cogent daily compendium of global and national news highlights — a column that set the standard for compression news writing nationally. Tom sought retirement following Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Journal, in 2007, and along the way moved from The Bronx to South Jersey, in Delran, where he’d grown up and would spend his final years.

Tom is survived by his wife, Jeannie (nee Vasquez), his sister, MaryPat Manley, his nieces, Amy, Heather, and Jenn (pre-deceased by his niece, Bridget) as well as grand nieces and nephews and many cousins and extended family and friends. A service in celebration of his life will be planned for a future date. Donations in Thomas’ memory to Breakthrough T1D (breakthrough1d.org), which was previously Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, will be appreciated.