THE AUTHOR

Thomas L. Webber has been a community organizer, high school teacher, college professor, school administrator, non-profit agency Executive Director, actor, and opera singer. The son of former New York Theological Seminary President, George “Bill” Webber and Helen Webber, founder of the East Harlem Tutorial Program, he grew-up in Washington Houses on 102nd Street and spent more than sixty years living and working in East Harlem. He graduated Harvard College with honors in Government, received his Ph.D. from Columbia Teachers’ College, earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from City College New York, and was awarded a Doctorate in Humane Letters from Metropolitan College of New York. For fifteen years, Tom was the Superintendent/Executive Director of Edwin Gould Academy, a residential school for youth caught up in the New York City foster care/juvenile justice system. Under his leadership the Academy won the prestigious Innovations in American Government Award granted jointly by the Ford Foundation and the Harvard School of Government. Tom taught at the Real Great Society Prep School, The College for Human Services, and the Hunter College School of Education and was the Executive Director of Bigs and Littles NYC Mentoring. He was elected to two terms as a member of East Harlem’s Community School Board 4 and co-founded the East Harlem Tutorial Program’s Scholars Academies. He has served on the boards of the East Harlem Tutorial Program, Metropolitan College of New York, The Fortune Society, Franklin Plaza Apartments, and the Metropolitan Hospital Community Advisory Council. In addition to AIDA’S STORY, Tom is the author of two highly regarded books: DEEP LIKE THE RIVERS, W.W. Norton, an oral history of slavery in the United States and FLYING OVER 96TH STREET, Scribner, a memoir of his childhood growing up in East Harlem. Tom is currently working on a compilation of short stories as well as on a screenplay based in ante-bellum New Orleans. When not writing, Tom sings, plays guitar and piano, jogs, and visits with his two children, Aili and Matthew, and his three grandchildren, Isabel, Arthur, and Scout. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife, retired physician Andrea Bertocci Webber.

To learn more about Tom and see and to hear him talking in person you can Google:

– RICHARD HEFFNER’S OPEN MIND, VTR date, June 30, 2005

– JERRY JAZZ MUSICIAN, December 16, 2004

– Thomas L. Webber, Ph.D. speaks at the Metropolitan College of New York Graduation, YouTube, July 10, 2022