Tom Quinlan's career spanned eight decades as a poetry teacher, reader and scholar.  

Born in Philadelphia on January 28, 1925, Tom attended Catholic primary and secondary schools. He served for three years in the US Army Air Corps during World War II and then graduated from LaSalle University in 1949. He married Virginia Clark in 1948 and they had three children, Tom, Joe and Ginny, three grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. 

Tom taught for 35 years at Lincoln High School in Philadelphia and another 25 at Delaware Valley University’s continuing education program, among others. He taught English for two summers at universities in Xian, China. He holds a Masters equivalent degree from Temple University, and studied at the Universities of Bologna, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rutgers.  

For ten years beginning in the late 90s, Tom attended the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland where he met Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney. In 2012, the Quinlan family established the Tom Quinlan Lectureship at Glucksman Ireland House at New York University to honor the winner of the Seamus Heaney prize for best first published book of poetry in the UK and Ireland as judged annually by the faculty at the Heaney Center at Queens College, Belfast. Heaney spoke at the program’s launch and praised Tom’s career as a teacher, surely the capstone of Tom's life as a poetry lover.  

On his 91st birthday, Tom released his first book, "A Crowd of Stars," a collection of his favorite poems with thoughtful introductions for readers. Tom passed on January 15, 2024, just two weeks short of his 99th birthday.