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The Long Gray Line gained an outstanding file when <em>Tom Hanley</em> died 9 March 1969 in Boca Raton, Florida. Funeral services were held in Fort Myer Chapel with Tom's son Dexter, a Jesuit priest, officiating. Burial was in Arlington National Cemetery with Washington Classmates as honorary pallbearers. He is survived by his wife, Cecelia; two sons, Colonel Thomas J. Hanley III, United States Air Force, and Father Dexter L. Hanley, S.J., of Washington, D.C., and a daughter, Mrs. William R. McAlpine of Pompano Beach, Florida.</p>
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Appointed from the Seventeenth District of Ohio, Tom brought to West Point a gregarious disposition and a keen sense of humor. Active in many cadet activities, we remember him most often as a member of the football squad where he was too small for the Varsity but large enough to be hammered around on the Scrubs. That he stuck it out for three bruising years showed the grit and determination that were to serve him well in later years. He developed a strong sense of duty and to him "Duty, Honor, Country” constituted a beacon for guidance throughout his long military career.</p>
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He had that rare ability to laugh readily at himself as shown by his letter in our '35<em> Year Book </em>in which he reminded us that "He failed to make the Engineers and so became an additional second lieutenant of Infantry.” But the Doughboys were not for him. The "wild blue yonder” beckoned and in July 1916 he joined the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. He remained with the flying game, with its various names—Air Service, Air Corps, Army Air Force, and finally United States Air Force—until his retirement in 1952 as a Major General. He failed to get overseas in World War I, but in World War II, after holding important assignments in Washington and the Training Command, he finished the war in the China-Burma-India Theatre. Postwar services included two years in command of a numbered Air Force, and then he rounded out his active duty as head of the combined Air Force-Army Recruiting Service.</p>
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For a while after retirement the Hanleys divided their time between Washington and Florida, but the lure of year-round golf finally prevailed, and they made Boca Raton their home. Tom immediately became active in the civic affairs of their adopted community. He served for eight years as a Director of the Boca Raton National Bank; for eight years he was a member of the Library Board during which time Boca Raton’s first library came into being; and as a member of the original "Committee of 100,” whose purpose was the establishment of a university, he saw Florida Atlantic University become a reality.</p>
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A devoted husband and father, a warm and loyal friend, and a son of whom West Point can be proud, he richly merited his Alma Mater’s final accolade: “Well Done.”</p>
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Nearly four score years ago Rudyard Kipling might well have been writing of Tom when he penned these words:</p>
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"E’en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth, In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth."</p>
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<em>—A Classmate</em></p>