Edward Joseph Tomey

Ed was born in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1937 to George Tomey and Rosemary (Tomer) Bernheimer, both children of Lebanese immigrants. He attended the Watkinson School in Hartford and graduated from Colby College in 1959 with a degree in English literature. After college, Ed spent seven years as a public relations officer in the U.S. Air Force, with assignments in South Korea, Germany, and the Pentagon. He produced radio and television programs, edited award-winning newspapers, and wrote speeches for senior officials. He then earned his master’s degree in education from Harvard, and from 1973 to 1981 he taught professional skills at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and the Kennedy School of Government.

Ed moved to the Monadnock Region in 1976 and over the next five decades left a transformative mark across the region. At Antioch University New England, he chaired the Department of Organization and Management for eight years, founded the Management Institute for New England, and was named Professor Emeritus in 1999. Through the Corporate Fund, a partnership of New Hampshire corporations and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, he spent nearly twenty years helping nonprofits across the state build stronger boards and leadership. And over nearly fifty years as an independent consultant and leadership coach, he worked with companies, hospitals, schools, government agencies, and community groups throughout New England.

Over this same time period, Ed and his wife Mary Helen Gardner, known to everyone as Maich and the love of Ed’s life, worked side by side for the causes they shared, among them housing and homelessness, racial equity and inclusion, chamber music and human services. They were devoted supporters of Ashuelot Concerts, which promotes classical music as a powerful force for positive change, and gave tirelessly to other organizations close to their hearts, including MoCo Arts, Keene’s arts education center for young people, and Hundred Nights, the city’s emergency shelter for the unhoused. Ed and Maich were jointly honored with the Elm City Rotary Club’s Paul Harris Fellow Award and the Cheshire Health Foundation’s Tribute for Contributions to Community. Ed also received Antioch’s Horace Mann Award and the New Hampshire Center for Nonprofits’ first Nonprofit Board Excellence Award, and served on The Keene Sentinel’s advisory board.

Music sat at the very center of who Ed was, from his early boyhood listening to records in his apartment home. While Ed loved nearly all music genres, from Beethoven’s overtures to the jazz of Dave Brubeck to the folk songs of James Taylor, his deepest love was the Great American Songbook, whether sung by Sinatra and Bennett or carried artfully by Coltrane and Miles Davis. During his time at Colby, he found a forever home in the Colby Eight, the college’s all-male a cappella group, and the men he sang beside became some of his best friends for life. In his eighties, while residing at Covenant Living, he and his friends Carl and Ruth Jacobs formed The Three of Us trio. With Ruth on piano and Carl on bass, Ed sang dozens of songs drawn mostly from the Songbook he had loved since the 1950s.

Ed also had a lifelong passion for the theater, as both an audience member and a skilled performer. He took the stage many times in the Keene Lions Club’s annual Broadway musicals, including The Music Man, Sweet Charity, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and performed in other regional productions.

Ed was a great lover of the outdoors, which began with fishing alongside his brother Fred and grew into a lifelong devotion to nature and the land. Each of his homes mattered deeply to him and fed his spirit, from his cabin in West Swanzey to homes on Court Street and then Hurricane Road in Keene, and finally at Covenant Living, where his windows looked out on his beloved Mount Monadnock. He was never happier than in a field on his tractor or in the vegetable and flower gardens he tended with care and pride.

Ed also loved sports, whether he was skiing, playing softball, basketball, and tennis, or cheering passionately for the Bruins, Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics. Until recent years, he went to games often and witnessed historic wins, none more memorable than the Patriots’ 2002 Snow Bowl playoff victory over the Raiders, which he and his son Josh watched together in the falling snow.

But more than anything else, Ed adored, supported, and celebrated his large family as an extraordinary father, husband, brother, grandfather, and uncle. He had a particular gift for connecting with his children and grandchildren, listening to, guiding, and laughing with them, and helping them through the opportunities and challenges of their lives, their loves, and their careers.

Ed carried his Lebanese family heritage with pride all his life. After first traveling to Lebanon in the 1960s, he returned in 2017 with Josh to trace the roots of their ancestors. Together, they found relatives in Moukhtara in the Chouf mountains, the town his father’s family came from, and were welcomed into the home in Zahle where his mother’s family began and where her relatives still live today.

Ed is survived by Maich, his partner of 51 years and wife of 45; his children, Joshua Tomey of Miami, Florida, Christopher Gardner of Dover, Massachusetts, Matthew Gardner of Natick, Massachusetts, and Amanda Gardner Elkin, of Natick, Massachusetts; his eight grandchildren, Ryan, Adelaide, Sawyer, Cooper, Gabe, Jamie, Sam, and Lucy; and his brother, David Tomey, and sisters, Kristine Tomey and Patricia Tarnowicz. He was predeceased by his beloved parents and older brother, Fred.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that anyone wishing to honor Ed consider a contribution to Ashuelot Concerts at https://ashuelotconcerts.org/donate/ or by calling (603) 336-3631.

The family will hold a private celebration of life. A community celebration of Ed will be announced shortly.