Thomas Patrick Sexton, who lived a life filled to the brim with love of family, teaching, travel and theater, died peacefully at his home in Lemoyne, Pa., on Sept. 18, 2018, in the loving care of his wife, his two children and his grandchildren. He was 92.

Tom’s journey began in West Orange, N.J., in 1926, where he was born the youngest of three children of Thomas C. Sexton and Margaret (Drew) Sexton. His was an extended, sociable family, with aunts and uncles he cherished. Throughout his life, he recalled walking with his father each Sunday to attend Mass at St. John’s in Orange, a parish his grandfather helped establish. He was athletic and, at 6’2, tall for that era. He loved playing basketball with his friends on Gaston Street. His court in high school was an empty swimming pool, with hoops at either end. This may explain why, even later in life, he personally preferred the hook shot to the layup.

At age 17, he enlisted in the Navy Seabees and his life of travel began. A year later, on one of the most momentous days in modern history, D-Day, June 6, 1944, he landed on Omaha Beach (Easy Red Sector) with the 111th Seabee Battalion. His task that day was lowering the ramp on the Rhino ferry so that tanks could drive onto the beach. Later, the Seabees would build docks and landing strips on the beachhead so the vast Allied Army could be supplied.

After service on the European Front, he was assigned to Guam. Although he was unaware of it before a routine test upon returning stateside, he contracted tuberculosis in Guam. He spent two years recuperating, both in bed at home and in a sanatorium, before being honorably discharged in 1947.

Waiting for him at home was Anne Lauris McCormick, who became the love of his life and his wife for 68 years. They had met on a double date with Anne’s sister, Maureen, in 1944, while Tom was back in the United States awaiting reassignment. He renewed the acquaintance after his recuperation in 1947. They were married in 1950.

Anne brought to the relationship energy, enthusiasm and a sociability that made it easy for the couple to make and keep friends. In Tom’s last months and days, Anne stayed at his side, offering an intense level of care that allowed him to remain at home. Together, they enjoyed rooting for the Phillies on TV.

Anne also had a willingness to travel and the ability to endure the challenges that came from living on a teacher’s salary, which did not allow for deluxe accommodations. They hauled RV trailers to live in Mexico and in Vermont, near Middlebury College. They toured Europe and slept in a Volkswagon mini-bus, a four-cylinder vehicle that groaned its way up and down the Alps. At the end of the month, before Tom’s next paycheck, dinner might feature scrambled eggs and Spam. No one complained.

The Sextons lived in New Jersey, Mexico City, Orange County, Calif., Madrid, and Kutztown, Pa. After retirement, Tom and Anne lived in the Poconos and Apopka, Fla., where the couple became avid golfers. In 2012, they moved into Essex House in Lemoyne, Pa., where they made yet another round of friends.

Tom was always ready for another trip. In his 90’s, when he was ailing and unsteady on his feet, he tried his best – but unsuccessfully – to convince his grandchildren to take him on a trip to Cuba. He first visited the island in the late 1970s on a trip he hosted for his Kutztown Spanish students. His daughter, Sharon, accompanied him on that trip and returned with a photo of Tom smoking a big Cuban cigar, a commanding and happy Don Tomás.

Seton Hall and Anne

At age 21, Tom was a man in a hurry, anxious to make up for years lost to the war and his illness. He enrolled at Seton Hall University in his hometown as a student of modern languages and graduated Magna Cum Laude in just two years and eight months. His wife and family were proud that he was selected Valedictorian of the Class of 1951. A photo shows a lanky Tom Sexton, in his mortarboard and gown, flanked by his happy parents.

Tom recalled a dispute with his commencement advisor, who imposed some of his own ideas on Tom’s speech. As a man who had withstood the trials of World War II, he was certainly able to withstand the criticism of his advisor. He gave the speech, speaking passionately about the powers of the state vs. the family as the natural unit of society. He favored the family.

Two days after graduation, Tom and Anne drove from Irvington, N.J., to Mexico City. Using the time remaining to him on the G.I. Bill, he enrolled in the master’s program at Mexico City College. To them, Mexico City was a paradise and they made many fast friends, storing up anecdotes that entertained family and friends for years. One was about using their scarce resources to buy bottled water called Agua Pura. One day, on a trip to the countryside, they rode past a humble hut with a delivery truck parked next to it. The driver was using water from the hut’s outside faucet to fill up jugs labeled Agua Pura.

Anne was game for all these adventures, but did return a bit early from Mexico to ensure her health in advance of the birth of their daughter, Sharon, in 1952.

Teaching, and Still Learning

Back from Mexico, Tom taught Spanish at Seton Hall Prep and took on the first in a long list of supplemental summer and nighttime jobs. One of the best-paid gigs was a job as an unarmed (but well-dressed) railroad detective. His time at Seton Hall Prep came to an end after he co-signed a letter to school officials seeking their support to form a teachers’ union. He then taught in public schools and after the birth of their son, Tommy, the family left for distant – and sunny – California.

In California, he kept up his routine of working odd summer jobs, this time at a brand-new park called Disneyland. He worked at the park’s rifle range and was impressed when Walt (yes, that Walt) would come by and sight the guns. His favorite job, though, was as the uniformed captain of the Disneyland steamboat. (Little did his impressed children know, he wasn’t steering it for real; the boat ran on a submerged rail.)

Tom’s days of teaching Spanish, and sometimes French, and coaching basketball (until Anne computed the hourly compensation for that last task) were wonderful. Years later, when he was in his 80s, students at Rancho Alamitos High School

invited him back to California to be honored at their 50th class reunion. He also discovered the joys of theater, a passion he pursued as an educator, an amateur actor and – in retirement – as professional with a Screen Actors Guild card.

One summer, the family hauled a trailer to Mexico City for Tom’s final work on his master’s, and during others traveled throughout the Eastern Seaboard when he worked for Holt Reinhart Winston, teaching teachers how to make good use of the publisher’s foreign language textbooks.

The trips instilled in the fearsome foursome a sense of adventure and a love for the varied landscape and peoples of North America. During this time, his nephew Peter Force decided to join the Sexton family for a while in California as he pursued his college degree and played baseball. And Tom was overjoyed when Frank Drew, his Uncle Frankie, moved his 10-person family to nearby Fillmore, Calif.

In 1964, Tom won a Fulbright scholarship and the family set sail for Madrid, so he could study for his PhD in Contemporary Spanish Literature. This was the year of vacation journeys all over Europe in the retro-fitted VW Microbus, another source of family stories – including one where, with Tom at the wheel and Anne outside giving directions, he almost backed the minibus over a snowy cliff. On one trip to Normandy, France, in the era before today’s deluxe guided tours, Tom drove off the main roads and through high grass and hills and, although his family thought he was lost, he emerged onto Omaha Beach, the place where he had landed on D-Day as an 18-year-old. To this day his children and grandchildren love to travel.

With doctorate in hand, the family returned to California briefly before settling back on the east coast in 1966, when Tom got a job as a Spanish professor at Kutztown University in Kutztown, Pa. The town in eastern Pennsylvania was close to many McCormick and Sexton relatives in New Jersey, but it was quite a shift from laid-back California to a strait-laced town in Pennsylvania Dutch country. One of the wonders of Tom’s life was that he was a committed progressive Democrat who spent many of his years surrounded by conservative Republican neighbors and friends. He discovered it was better to play bridge than talk politics. Yet, Tom ended up as president of the Kutztown Rotary Club, and for 10 years gave the annual Veterans Day address at the town park. He enjoyed weekly rounds of golf with his buddies. He became more engaged in theater, directing plays in English and in Spanish. He was known as a professor to stay away from if you wanted an easy grade. But his students learned.

Retirement and a Second Career

While at Kutztown, Tom and Anne bought property at Pocono Farms, a development in the mountains 70 miles away. A second home was a financial stretch, so Tom bought a DIY housing “kit” and spent a summer building a vacation chalet with Anne and Tommy. At age 62, after 40 years of teaching, Tom and Anne retired to the Pocono chalet. Both worked to become better golfers, and Tom began producing theater pieces for the community at the Farms.

In 1988, Anne and Tom moved to Apopka, Fla, where they enjoyed the beautiful weather and golf, and where they once again made fast friends. It was here that Tom’s acting literally paid off.  He got roles that called for a tall, healthy senior citizen with a full head of grey hair – a head of hair he kept until the day he died. He made a few dozen TV commercials, in English and Spanish, many of them related to retirement and senior living. He even appeared in a rock music video, as an old guy playing cards.

Anne would occasionally comment that his “pretend” wives seemed to get younger at every shooting. He achieved his dream of membership in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) after playing the part of a judge in the film Recount, about the 2000 presidential election in Florida.  Of course, he didn’t tell anyone about his small role and surprised a lot of friends and family who were shocked to see his face pop up on the screen.  He was so proud of his SAG card and was a union man his whole life.

Tom is survived by his beloved wife, Anne L. (McCormick) Sexton, their children Sharon Sexton (Tom Ferrick), of Philadelphia, and Thomas Patrick Sexton III (Barbara Weiss Sexton), of Camp Hill, and four fabulous grandchildren, Thomas and Cormac Ferrick, and Jacqueline and Connor Sexton.

We are proud of the man that he was and the life that he led.

A Mass of Christian Burial for Thomas P. Sexton was celebrated on Thursday, Sept. 20, at St. Theresa Church, New Cumberland. His ashes were interred Friday, Sept. 21 at the Indiantown Gap National Cemetery in Annville, Pa.