Thomas F. Boyle

Thomas F. Boyle, a professor and author of several well-received mystery novels, who went to high school in Carlisle and returned to live here later in his life, died on Sunday, July 5, 2015 at his home. He was 76.
Boyle was the step-son of Ken Millen, the legendary football coach for Carlisle High School beginning in the 1950s.
Boyle, who also lived part of the year in Brooklyn, N.Y., was a retired professor of English at Brooklyn College. His works included three dark mystery novels set in his adopted borough-- Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, Post-Mortem Effects and Brooklyn Three. The New York Times called Brooklyn Three, "A poetically violent finale to Boyle's surreal odyssey through his beloved and despised borough." Boyle was born in East Stroudsburg in the coal regions in 1939. His father, Thomas, died in a boating accident when Boyle was 8. His mother, born Evelyn Krause, subsequently married Millen and the family moved to Carlisle in 1957. During his senior year at Carlisle High School Boyle was a forward on the basketball team. He graduated from Cornell University and New York University, where he earned a Ph.D. He served in the Army in the late 1960s. He began his teaching career at Brooklyn College in 1969 and retired in 2010. He married Peggy Taylor circa 1972 and they had a son, William T. Boyle. They subsequently divorced. Boyle was awarded several fellowships, including the NEH and the Guggenheim Foundation in the early 1990s. In 1995, Boyle married Elizabeth Jacobs Jamieson, a Carlisle native also living in Brooklyn, whom he'd known as a teenager after meeting in the Bosler Library -- she was working there; he was looking for novels by P.G. Wodehouse. The couple began living in Carlisle part time after their marriage.
In addition to his wife Elizabeth and son William, he is survived by two-step children, Wendell Jamieson and Elizabeth Gallagher; and four step grandchildren.
A private Celebration of his Life will be held at the convenience of the family. Hoffman-Roth Funeral Home & Crematory, Inc., 219 N. Hanover St., Carlisle is handling the arrangements.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Bosler Library, 158 West High Street, Carlisle, PA, 17013.
To sign the guestbook, please visit www.hoffmanroth.com