Heavy equipment operator, race car driver/builder, church founder and minister, race track owner/operator, husband, father of two, grandfather and great-grandfather, taken by the dread virus.
Mr. Terry, known widely as Tom, was hospitalized in Tyler, Texas, a couple of weeks before his passing on December 27, 2020. His wife, Barbara, said that he last days were very difficult and painful before he finally passed away just after Christmas.
He was born to his Texan parents in Rahway, N.J. when his father, Thomas N. Terry II, was working on the "big inch pipeline" that was vital to shipping Texas oil to the east coast for ships, tanks and airplanes involved in fighting WW II in Europe. Without the completion of the pipeline, the war effort would have been far more difficult and likely lasted longer, resulting in many more deaths. The pipeline's completion in New Jersey was considered so significant that it was covered in the filmed "newsreels" of the day played in movie theaters across America.
Tom and his family of parents and two brothers grew up around the pipeline work of their father as they moved from place to place following the high paying work with heavy equipment in the east and as far west as the Colorado-Wyoming state line. After high school years at Exeter High School, and trying out other jobs that didn't appeal to him, Tom joined his father in pipeline construction and maintenance work, rising quickly to the role of operating engineer, the title given highly skilled workers who operate the dangerous heavy equipment that goes into pipeline building.
After the frequent moving about necessitated by their father's occupation, the family bought a small ranch in Southeastern Oklahoma as his father pursued another dream, owning his own farming and ranching operation. When that didn't go as well as planned, while keeping the farm in Oklahoma, the family moved back to the state where they had spent most of their time, Pennsylvania, while the father worked in the more stable field of pipeline maintenance, repair and the building of shorter connecting lines. They lived in Exeter Township attending the local high school. The youngest brother, the much beloved Robert Steven Terry, passed away at the age of eight in 1962 while living with his mother in Texas following a divorce.
Tom Terry III had a varied career while working on the pipelines in Pennsylvania, building and racing his own stock cars at a local track near Boyertown. He became so adept at racing on the dirt track oval that some observers believed that other, less accomplished racers would deliberately cause him to crash so they could have the chance to win. He pursued racing for more than 15 years and successfully won featured races in the modified stock car field. His passing was noted in regional racing publications in Pennsylvania.
Anxious to return to the state of Texas of his parents, where the family had lived for a time and where, as children, the family had spent part of most summers and almost every Christmas vacation, Tom and his wife Barbara moved to their own custom built house outside of Bullard, Texas. They later built another house on a ten acres of land, a house set back from any roadway to provide privacy and quiet.
Like his father had before him, Tom found it difficult to earn a good living in Texas where the wages for his training and expertise were much lower in a non-union state. So, for almost ten years, he and his wife Barbara would journey to Pennsylvania in the warmer months where he once again worked in the pipeline industry. Eventually, they moved full time to East Texas where, for a while, Tom tried out various business opportunities, including a commercial grading and land developing business using heavy equipment. He even opened a car repair garage at one point before deciding that it was not a worthy opportunity.
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