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Tom Wilcox: New Man River

Tom Wilcox once thought he was retired. But that was then. This is now. Retired no more, Tom is now interim executive director of the Connecticut River Museum in Essex.

Tom took over after the departure of Chris Dobbs, who left in August to become executive director of the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. A search committee is now in the process of finding a new permanent director for the Connecticut River Museum.

Tom, who was chair of the board of the museum before assuming his new role, is actually splitting the interim position with another Connecticut River Museum board member, local historian Brenda Milkofsky.

“We thought we would split the duty and I would take the first three months. If it seems disruptive, I’d could stay around a little longer,” Tom says.

Tom is keenly aware of the contrast between the role of an interim and a permanent director.

“Interim is completely different and I have thought about that,” he says. “Were I the new director, I’d be thinking way down the road, 5 or 10 years. But as an interim, I am thinking about what to do now; we have a terrific staff and I want to keep things moving, and not make decisions that will have a long-term impact.”

Running a museum is not a new experience for Tom. He was executive director of the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine from 1994 to 2006.

Tom, however, started out on a completely different career path. He was a banker for more than 20 years just as his father had been. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history and the “vague sense that I should go into business,” he recalls. Banking, he felt, would give him the experience of working with many different kinds of businesses.

People, he says, now ask him why he stayed with banking for so long.

“Lack of imagination, I guess,” he confesses, but by the mid-l990s, he was ready for a new kind of challenge.

He thought about becoming a business manager for a private school; he himself was a graduate of Choate. Then he heard the Maine Maritime Museum was looking for a director, and though he doubted his qualifications fit the description, he inquired about the job. He was already a board member of the Mystic Seaport as well as the Connecticut River Museum and felt that might make him a more viable candidate.

To Tom’s surprise, what the museum was looking for was a candidate with a business background and they hired him. For the first two or three years in Maine, he recalls, he still thought of himself as a banker. But after that time, he reassessed his capabilities.

“Wait, I am a museum person,” he told himself, though he admits the job was “a big learn” in the beginning.

Still, he adds the whole process took somewhat longer.

“It takes about seven years before a museum is truly yours,” he adds.

Tom stayed even longer, moving on to the New England Historical Genealogical Society in Boston after 12 years. The society, Tom points out, is the oldest genealogical center of its kind in the United States, founded in 1845. It enables people to research family histories on their own with the assistance of a professional genealogist.

Though he never became a professional genealogist himself, Tom admitted that the experience had left him with new research skills, which he demonstrated to a recent visitor by mentioning a few basic facts he had gleaned about her background.

Tom left the genealogical society in 2013 when he was 70.

“Time to retire,” he says.

He added that there were a few things he still wanted to do, among them take his boat down the Intracoastal Waterway to Florida. Before that adventure, however, was the question of where to live. Should he and his wife Annie retire to Bath, Maine, where they had many friends?

“Too remote,” Tom says.

Or Shelter Island, where Tom has gone during the summer since boyhood?

“Too dreary in January, February, and March,” he explains.

In the end, Tom and Annie decided on Essex, where they had lived in Tom’s banking days.

The Intracoastal Waterway trip, which Tom did alone in 2014 his 28-foot Cape Dory motorboat, started from Essex and ended in Boca Grande, Florida. It was the kind of adventure that does not seem out of place for a man who says Moby Dick is his favorite book.

The trip took some 35 days down and, because of bad weather, 54 days back. In between, Annie flew down to Florida and the couple spent a month there.

The whole trip was done without one of the seeming technological essentials of contemporary life: “No cellphone,” Tom says, though sometimes he longed for a bit of conversation. “I sometimes stayed at marinas just for the sociability,” he explains.

Also on Tom’s retirement list is writing the story of his own family, with his one grandchild in mind—”The crown prince,” he calls him. And he is also pursuing his lifelong interest in history, not the history of famous people, but of ordinary citizens.

“How people lived day to day, the details, people who were not famous people,” he says.

When Tom retired to Essex, he once again became a trustee of the Connecticut River Museum, though he has now resigned from the board so there would be no conflict in his role as interim director. When a new director is in place, however, he says he would go back on the board again, “If they ask me.”

In whatever role he has, Tom is enthusiastic about projects planned at the museum, like the addition planned for Lay House, the River Discovery Center, which will provide an ecological picture of the river and its surroundings. A small outbuilding by the Lay House will also be refurbished, Tom says, as “first-class storage space.”

Beyond physical facilities, Tom thinks the museum campus serves as a resource for the entire community.

“It’s a place townspeople can come and just hang out, sit on the dock, look at the river, and we have Thursday Nights at the Dock,” he says, pointing to the free summer concerts

As for his own role, Tom says, “Just keep on, put one foot in front of another, keep the momentum going.”