Remembering Tom Hambright
A memorial service for Tom Hambright will take place Saturday, November 4th, 11am, at The Basilica of St. Mary Star of the Sea. Interment will take place at Southern Keys Cemetery, Big Coppitt Key with full military honors, followed by a reception at El Meson de Pepe on Mallory Square.
Thomas Leroy Hambright was born February 23, 1938, in Mooresville, North Carolina, to Robert Lee and Rachel (Sims) Hambright. He graduated from Troutman High School in 1956 and Appalachian State Teachers College in Boone, North Carolina, in 1960.
Tom told Friends of the Key West Library board member Ellen T. White last year that he started getting interested in history very early – when he was a toddler and his grandmother took care of him while his parents were working 12-hour days in the cotton mills of his native North Carolina during World War II.
“She was from mountain people and she used to tell me stories about the old days, and it got my interest,” Tom said. “I could have kicked myself later on, because unfortunately I don’t remember one of them. Anyway, that’s where it started, and in high school, I was the best history student.”
He intended to become a history teacher – but wound up in the military, serving in the U.S. Navy for 21 years, including appointments in Key West. He appeared in a September, 1969, Key West Citizen story about bachelor officers, where he was described as “a genial giant of a Southern man (6 foot, 6 inches)” who reportedly “likes the southern easiness of life here.”
In 1981, he retired as a Lieutenant Commander and returned to the island, where he took computer classes at Florida Keys Community College (now the College of the Florida Keys) and went to work for the Key West Art & Historical Society as a curator for three years.
Joining the library
In 1985, he joined the Monroe County Public Library’s Florida History department, which had been started by Betty Bruce with a strong focus on Conch genealogy, as well as collecting photographs and documents from the islands’ past.
Hambright, along with his late wife, Lynda, continued that work, helping many people trace their roots on the island. He helped people learn about local history, whether they were researching their families, their new home, or were just curious. He answered questions from journalists and historians. He and Lynda compiled an index to the Key West Citizen, a unique and essential resource for anyone researching the past in the Keys.
In the early 1990s, Tom oversaw the construction of a new wing on the library with a vault to protect the collection. In 1997, he and Lynda started a newspaper column for the Key West Citizen called “Key West 100 Years Ago Today,” intended to run for a year to mark the centennial of the USS Maine explosion.
The column was so popular that it continued and expanded to Today In Keys History, which still runs in the Citizen and appears on the Florida Keys History Center website and social media accounts. It recounts events from throughout the documented history of the Keys and has included excerpts from the 19th century diary of a Key West attorney and the 1822 logbook from the USS Shark, whose crew first raised the American flag over the island.
Two hundred years later, that logbook was donated and became part of the Florida Keys History Center archives.
“Tom Hambright absolutely loved the history of Key West and the Florida Keys, and he was endlessly fascinated by it. He was always inspired by Paul Harvey’s phrase “The Rest of the Story,” and he loved to uncover the deeper, little-known backstories of the events and players,” said Dr. Corey Malcom, who is now the Florida Keys History Center’s Lead Historian.
“Tom was also big on sharing history, too. For over 30 years, he was the editor of the Key West Maritime Historical Society’s ‘Sea Heritage Journal,’ the de facto Keys historical publication. And he was part of the team that selected the subjects and put together biographies for the Key West Memorial Sculpture Garden; he wrote a history of the USS Maine plot in the Key West Cemetery that determined exactly who was buried there, and he worked with Ed Knight to install the ‘Forgotten Soldier’ monument dedicated Key West’s US Colored Troops now in Bayview Park.”
The Florida Keys History Center itself is Tom’s largest legacy, Malcom said.
“For over 35 years he worked to build an important archive for Monroe County that now houses documents, photographs, and public records from the past,” Malcom said.
Anne Layton Rice, Assistant Library Director for Support Services, oversaw the work of the History Center.
“A great joy of my 23 years working with Tom was him peeking in my office door frequently to announce ‘We’ve got treasure!’ This meant I was to proceed directly to the History Room for Tom to delightedly display and explain a new donation,” Rice said. “Tom didn’t just love history, he loved sharing history. My son, now a KWHS senior, is a history honors student due to Tom’s enthusiasm. Primary sources over interpretations ruled in Tom’s domain.”
Malcom said Tom met with “thousands and thousands of people over those years and helped them find out about their families, their houses, or with research for dissertations, books, or films.”
Kimberly Matthews, Senior Director of Strategic Planning and Director of Libraries, said Tom’s work will have lasting effect. “His years of dedicated service will always leave a legacy for future generations to enjoy the history of the Keys,” she said.
Dr. Cori Convertito, curator and historian at the Key West Art & Historical Society said Tom was “a giant among men. Anyone who spoke with him quickly realized that his reverence and passion for local and maritime history was palpable — it was as though it was part of his genetic code. Serving in the U.S. Navy brought him to Key West, but it was this island and its history that ignited his true calling in life as a historian. His eagerness to read everything he could get his hands on, commit it to his eidetic memory, and share in such a cohesive and absorbing manner set him apart from all others.”
Alex Vega grew up in Key West, hearing stories about the old days from his grandfather. He followed his interest in history to the library when Betty Bruce ran the department and it was located on the side wing, where the Children’s Room is now.
He said many Conchs were skeptical when Tom first took over.
“At first, it was, ‘Who is this guy who was in the Navy who knows about Key West history?'” Vega said. “As the years went by, I would tell them ‘This guy knows more about Key West history than you who were born here.'”
A firefighter, Vega started documenting fires and their impact on the island throughout its history. In the pre-Internet years, he and Tom would go through microfilms of the Jacksonville newspaper, scouring it for mentions of Key West.
Vega eventually wrote a book resulting from that research and led the effort to preserve Fire Station No. 3, now named in his honor as the Alex Vega Firehouse Museum at the Key West Historic Firehouse.
Tom was “a treasure trove of knowledge. That’s what I called him – a walking encyclopaedia,” said Vega, who also credits him with instilling standards for research: “If you’re going to say something about history, about any subject or person, make sure you have the facts to back it up.”
Reaching millions with the image archive
Tom was a popular public speaker and gave countless talks on Keys history, but his widest reach was online, through the Florida Keys History Center’s image archive on Flickr. Tom led a team of volunteers who made high-resolution scans, identified them and uploaded them to the site. More than 23,000 images are online and freely available for viewing and downloading. They have been viewed more than 43 million times.
“When Tom and I first discussed digitization, he was concerned: ‘What if they stop coming in (because everything is online)?’” Rice said. “Quite the contrary: Tom was then overwhelmed with scholars and researchers from all over the world wanting more – especially more Tom.”
Even after his retirement on his 84th birthday in 2022, Tom continued as the Florida Keys History Center’s most devoted volunteer, coming in several times a week to scan more images and share his knowledge about the island with library staff and patrons.
Tom was named Monroe County Employee of the Year in 1999. In 2016, the city of Key West declared January 5th “Tom Hambright Day” in recognition of his service. In 2017, the Key West Art & Historical Society honored him with the prestigious Scotti Merrill Preservation Award. When he retired in 2022, the county bestowed the title of Historian Emeritus.
“Tom Hambright was such an amazing person and blessing to this community,” said Monroe County Mayor Craig Cates. “His knowledge of the Florida Keys history was unparalleled, and he devoted so much of his life to the Keys.”
It seemed like Tom was always on duty behind his desk piled with documents and books, but on his rare vacations, he was delving into even more history.
“Always on the quest for the perfect hot dog while visiting presidential birth homes, Tom traveled in his huge van listening to his favorite music station: Willie’s Roadhouse,” Rice said.
Tom’s wife, Lynda, died in 2021. Tom is survived by a large family of colleagues, friends and admirers in the Keys and beyond.
“While I consider Tom a mentor, I also had the pleasure of his friendship and support as I began my own career in maritime and local history. No phone call went ignored; no question went unanswered, even if that meant hours of digging through primary source materials on microfilm or in Florida History’s vault,” Convertito said. “For years everyone said, ‘Tom is irreplaceable’ and ‘what will we do without Tom?’. We will carry on the good work in his absence, but we will continue repeating those sentences because he was truly one of a kind and it is difficult to imagine him not being on the other end of the phone to assist.”
Malcom said Tom’s legacy continues through the work of the Florida Keys History Center, from people looking at microfilm and documents at the Center in Key West to those viewing online photos from around the world.
“Tom will be missed terribly, and his death leaves a big hole, but he has also left so much for us to appreciate, learn from, and build upon,” Malcom said. “We understand the Florida Keys, and how our island communities came to be, much better because of him. Tom may be gone, but he is unforgettable.”
