Tom Wakely for Congress

Tom Is A Self-Taught Man

In Denver Tom studied journalism and political science at Loretto Height College. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he enrolled in the university's peace and conflict studies program. He studied Biology and Earth Sciences at Ohio State University. He rounded out his education by studying Liberation Theology at the Chicago Theology Seminary. " While at CTS I organized a week long conference on religion and politics, " Tom said. "Among the speakers was former New Mexico Governor, Tony Anaya, who spoke about his Catholic faith and how it moved him to commute all the prisoners on death row in our state to life in prison."

 

Tom Has Always Put Others Before Himself

A Vietnam-era USAF veteran Tom worked with César Chávez on the grape boycott campaign in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. On one visit to Denver he met the President of Local #105 of the Service Employess International Union. That meeting led to Tom being offered a job organizing nurses, window washers and janitors. "I remember those campaigns very well," Tom says. "One day while I was attempting to organize nurses at a local hospital I was arrested and tossed in jail. When I went to trial I remember the judge asking members of the jury pool if anyone wasn't able to render an impartial verdict to please stand up. That's when an old Black man stood up, steadying himself with a cane. He said, your honor, I'm a retired union brick layer and I could never convict another union man and send him to jail, no matter what he done. That juror was dismissed. I was found not guilty. And to this day I am still fighting for the working men and women of this country."

 

After seminary Tom moved to Wisconsin to work as a community organizer. While there he became a foster parent to two young latino twin brothers. He organized the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lakes in Elkhorn and served as the congregations first pastor. He ran for school board and was elected. When Tom was asked to move back to Texas to serve as the Executive Director of the Economic Justice Foundation in Austin he answered that call. It was a role that earned him a Community Service Award from the NAACP chapter in that city. 

 

Recognizing the heavy toll his political and community activism was taking on his mental, emotional, and physical health Tom and Lety decided they needed to do something completely different. So they packed up and moved to the Pacific coast of Mexico where they opened VIVA VINO, jazz night club on the beach in Manzanillo. Three years later Tom's brother called him to say their mother was very ill and she was about to be placed into hospice care. Could he and his wife return to San Antonio to take care of her? A month later they were back in the River City. 

 

After Tom's mother died the hospice agency asked Tom and Lety if they would be interested in taking some additional hospice patients into their home. Again they said yes and over the next 12 years they took 84 people, primarily military veterans, into their home and cared for them until they died. Their oldest patient was Lucy Coffey, a highly decorated WWII veteran who served under General Douglas McArthur in the Phillipeans. But before her death at 109 she was invited to the White House by Vice-President Joe Biden to meet him and President Obama. Tom's wife took Lucy to Washington and a great time was had by all.