Thomas N. Keigler
Banker served as lacrosse coach, history teacher
and assistant headmaster at McDonogh School
Thomas N. Keigler, a banker who had served as McDonogh School’s lacrosse coach after a successful college playing career, died of brain cancer Oct. 11 at Stella Maris Hospice. The Timonium resident was 62.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Rodgers Forge and Wiltondale, he was the son of William Sorrell Keigler, a C.M. Kemp Co. president, and Myra Goodling. He was a 1973 graduate of Towson High School, where he played football and lacrosse.
He earned a degree at Washington and Lee University, where he played defense on the lacrosse team. In 2001 he was named to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
“Tom was one of the greatest lacrosse players at Washington and Lee,” said his coach, Jack Emmer. “He was an outstanding leader and the kind of person who thought of others first. He was a first-team All-American player on two occasions, and he played for the USA National Lacrosse team for two years.”
Mr. Keigler earned a master’s degree at the University of Virginia, where he also served an assistant lacrosse coach. He later earned a master’s degree in business administration from Loyola University Maryland.
He became a junior varsity lacrosse coach at Calvert Hall College High School before he was named head coach at McDonogh, where he held the post for eight years. He taught history and was also the school’s assistant headmaster.
“Soon after Tom arrived at McDonogh, he accepted an assignment as assistant headmaster, with an office connecting directly to mine,” said William Mules, the school’s former headmaster, who had watched Mr. Keigler play lacrosse at Washington and Lee. “The door between them was usually wide open. Our collegial relationship was just as close.”
Mr. Mules said that among Mr. Keigler’s assignments was serving as staff to the land use committee of the school’s board of trustees. “Tom supplied the energy and the muscle. His unofficial title was the Dean of Dirt.”
Mr. Mules recalled their working relationship: “?‘Hey, Tom, here’s a challenge. … Get back to me.’ Invariably he would undertake those chores with his characteristic can-do spirit, like a WW II Navy Seabee. When he left the school, I lost a colleague whose humor, kindness, common sense, and temperament supported me every working day.”
Mr. Mules also said, “As a lacrosse coach, he turned our program around.”
Mr. Keigler met his future wife, Barbara Schermerhorn, a teacher in the Howard County public schools system, in 1984. They married in 1986, and he died on their 31st wedding anniversary.
In 1988, Mr. Keigler left McDonogh to work for Jonas Brodie in the Brodie Organization. He later joined the commercial real estate department at the old Provident Bank. For the past two decades, he was group manager and vice president for Baltimore commercial real estate at M&T Bank.
“Tom was more than a colleague. He was our friend,” said Barbara Simmons, an M&T group vice president and department manager. “He was a mentor to many of us. Tom focused on forging relationships with our clients, colleagues. He put people first. He was trusted, and he was successful.”
Thomas S. Bozzuto, chairman of the Bozzuto Group, a real estate development and construction firm, said, “I have dealt with many banks over the years, and Tom was not just a banker. He was a partner and a gentleman. He helped in good times and in hard times.”
Mr. Keigler played on the men’s paddle tennis and tennis teams at the L’Hirondelle Club, where he served as club president from 1993 to 1994. He was part of a team that won the United States Tennis Association’s Senior National Championship in 2007.
When he could no longer play sports, Mr. Keigler took the family border collie to the fields of St. Paul’s School in Brooklandville, where he threw a tennis ball from his lacrosse stick for her to chase, family members said.
He coached his three sons in the Lutherville Timonium Recreational League in T-ball, baseball, lacrosse, football, basketball,and soccer. He also cheered them on from the sidelines of their high school and college games.
Mr. Keigler enjoyed playing golf and fishing with business associates. He spent part of the winter with family in Naples, Fla.
A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. today at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St.
Survivors include his wife, a teacher at Forest Ridge Elementary School in Laurel; three sons, William Thomas Keigler of New York City, Thomas Edward Keigler of Baltimore and Robert Bradford Keigler of Timonium; his father, of Naples, Fla.; and a sister, Lynn Keigler Pforr of Timonium.