Tom Waggener. (Courtesy photo)
Tom Waggener died at his home in Harvard on Feb. 15, 2026, after a seven-year struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 74.
Born April 15, 1951, in Galveston, Texas, Tom arrived two weeks after his father, William, died in a car accident. His mother, Mary, raised Tom and his older brothers, Bill and John, at first in Texas and then in Atlanta, in a home her mother built to share with them.
He loved building things from the start: peanut butter bird feeders he sold around the neighborhood, model airplanes that filled the backyard playhouse. He dreamed of flying, but nearsightedness grounded him. At Westminster High School he played soccer and graduated second in his class. A DuPont scholarship sent him to the University of Virginia, where he studied aerospace engineering, played on the 1969 ACC championship soccer team, grew out his hair, protested the Vietnam War, and took up the guitar.
Torn between art and science, Tom chose science—he felt he could do more good that way—and earned a doctorate in bioengineering at Harvard. During his postdoc in San Francisco, he stepped out of a closet at a party wearing a floppy green hat and met Nancy Day, a journalist. They married in 1980 and had two children, Allison and Hartley, settling into a fixer-upper Victorian in Newton. For Allison’s first birthday he invented and patented the Magic Muffe, a silky, color-rotating fabric toy both children clung to for years.
Tom’s career was as eclectic as he was. He ran the neonatal lab at Children’s Hospital, studied SIDS and whooping cough, and earned a second patent for a patient-monitoring device. He founded Physio Analytics, a medical-reporting software company now run by Hartley.
After his marriage ended, Tom shared a decade with Pallas Lombardi, with whom he bought a house by the Charles River, and in 1997 met Revan Miles, his partner for the rest of his life. In 2018 he fulfilled a lifelong dream of living in the country, moving to Harvard, where towering pines reminded him of Atlanta and he and Revan hosted holidays, played Saturday-night pool, and welcomed children and grandchildren.
A Southerner who became a Yankee, Tom was known for his big moustache, cowboy hat, and boots. He could fix almost anything and wasn’t intimidated by much. He made furniture and sewed well-loved costumes, played guitar at every gathering—”Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” “Maybellene,” “Johnny B. Goode”—and could juggle and open champagne with a sword. Gentle, funny, and fearless, he was a devoted father who always showed up. He protested from his wheelchair at the 2025 “No Kings” rally in Harvard, still hoping to make the world better.
He is survived by his children, Allison and Hartley Waggener; his granddaughter, Luna Kuranko; his partner, Revan Miles; and his brothers, Bill and John and their families. He is remembered for his brilliant, quirky mind, his indomitable spirit, and his signature cowboy boots and hat.