Longtime Media Resident Tom Baldwin Passes Away

MEDIA, PA — Philadelphia-area businessman Thomas Baldwin, who helped bring jobs to then-rural Delaware County, has died. He was 95.

Mr. Baldwin had family nearby in his final days, passing peacefully on Oct. 10, 2017 from multiple medical issues at the hospice of the Chester County Hospital. Born in a house on Station Way in Chadds Ford, Pa. on March 5, 1922, he spent his youth in Media, Pa.

For decades he could wisecrack that, "I've never been in a hospital — I was born in a house." His first job had him bicycling through Media's streets to deliver morning and evening newspapers. Mr. Baldwin met his wife-to-be, the late Lucille Hodgen, also of Media, at an area dancing school. "We were 13, and she had me good," Mr. Baldwin could recall. Their marriage spanned some six decades.

Thomas Broomall Temple Baldwin served in the Army Air Force in World War II, basing in England. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. His career in sales and sales-management covered more than 40 years with the fastener-manufacturer Southco. The company had started in a tight, two-level building on the Delaware River. It expanded to a facility built by the firm on a Concordville pasture.

If he had a first love after his family, his golf and his Phillies — and his dogs — it was his circa. 1928, gunning-and-fly-fishing shack. It peeked out at a rutted lane on top of a wilderness mountain, bordering Potter County, in north-central Pennsylvania.

He resided outside Media, on pastoral Crum Creek Road, and he had a cottage in Stone Harbor, NJ.

Mr. Baldwin is survived by two sons, Thomas Jr. of New Hope, Pa. and Christopher of Charlotte, N.C; by two granddaughters, Carly Baldwin and her husband, Greg Hanlon, of Secaucus, N.J. and their toddler, Mr. Baldwin's great-grandson, Eli Matthew Hanlon; and by Ashleigh Baldwin of Center City Philadephia.

Quaker services on a hillside overlooking his beloved Brandywine Valley were private. Photo: Tom Baldwin pictured with his great-grandson, Eli.