Thomas Vining Seessel, 87, of Featherbed Lane in Hopewell, died at his home on the morning of March 22.
Tom was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and came north to Dartmouth College on a Navy ROTC scholarship. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1959. After college, he became a Lieutenant on an ocean-going tugboat; as the navigator, he learned to sail by the stars. He met his wife, Diane, on a blind date on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1962, while on shore leave.
Tom and Diane married in 1963 and moved to Princeton, where Tom earned his master’s degree at the University’s School of Public and International Affairs. The school was filled with idealist young students who heeded John F. Kennedy’s call: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” After working for one of the nation’s first anti-poverty programs in New Haven, Connecticut, they returned to central New Jersey in 1968 to raise their family.
Tom spent his entire career with nonprofit organizations like the Ford Foundation, where he was a grant officer administering employment and housing programs for lower-income families. He also worked as the deputy commissioner for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in the 1970s. Later, drawing on his personal experience, he became the executive director of the National Council on Alcoholism. As he told The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, his mission there was simple. “I want to teach the American public two things,” he said. “Alcohol is a drug, and it’s okay to say ‘no.’”
After retiring in 1998, Tom became a consultant and adviser for various nonprofits, including local ones like the Sourland Conservancy and the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum.
Filled with a quick wit and a restless mental and physical energy, Tom had many personal interests. He loved to read, talk politics, and was a devoted member of the Princeton Pro Musica choral group. He served on the Hopewell School Board in the 1970s and 1980s, and neighbors remember him as one of the township’s first joggers. When that became too physically demanding, he became a regular biker around his beloved Sourland Mountain. He and Diane traveled extensively, including Africa, China, Russia, and Europe, and they were regular visitors to the Adirondacks and the red rock country of the American West.
Tom loved his family and was much loved by them. In addition to his wife Diane, he is survived by his three children, Adam, Jessica, and Ben; and three grandchildren, Isaac, Sam, and Maeve.
Donations in Tom’s memory can be made either to the Hopewell Fire Department and Emergency Medical Unit or the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum.
