June 11, 1944 - April 23, 2016
Died in Spokane on April 23, 2016, after a long fight with cancer. Tom was born June 11, 1944 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He married Sharon Reynolds in 1977 in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. Sharon selflessly supported and nursed him during his illness. They have three children: son Scott Douglas of Fort Worth, Texas (with grandson Scotty and granddaughter Taylor); son Josh Wobker of Coeur d'Alene; and daughter Jill Wobker Headley (with husband Cameron and granddaughter Lena) of Spokane. Tom is also survived by his brother David of Redmond, Washington and his family. Tom began grade school in Kansas City and then moved with his family to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from high school. After two years at Marquette University in Milwaukee, he transferred to the University of Kansas. There he earned a degree in journalism and joined Phi Gamma Delta social fraternity. A number of his frat brothers remained good friends for over 50 years, in particular Dave Marden. After college, Tom served in the Air Force as a Minuteman ICBM nuclear missile crew commander, attaining the rank of captain. Upon discharge, he attended the University Of Kansas School Of Law, graduating in 1974. He began working as a Kansas State Assistant Attorney General and later practiced law, often mixed with other business activities, in Missouri, Michigan and Idaho. He and his family moved to Post Falls in 1980. After working in the construction, electronics, and finance fields he ended his career with nearly 20 years at Pennaluna & Company, a stock brokerage in Coeur d'Alene. He retired and moved to Spokane in 2014. Tom loved his family, friends, nature and reading. In his younger years he enjoyed amateur boxing, fishing, football, and basketball; in latter days, hiking, cross-country skiing and walking on the Coeur d'Alene lake front. Tom also had a secret hobby of writing short, usually silly, rhymes. Over 600 were published under the pen name "The Bard of Sherman Avenue" in Huckleberries, the Spokesman-Review newspaper's most-visited blog, and in Dave Oliveria's Huckleberries print column. At Tom's request there will be no funeral or memorial service. Donations may be made in his memory to Hospice of Spokane, which provided him with kind care, or to Yasodhara Yoga Spokane.
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