Tom Yawkey

As the longtime owner of the Boston Red Sox, Tom Yawkey and his storied career are featured in several documentaries about the history of baseball and notable players. Tom Yawkey's love of baseball began when he was a young man. As a baby, he and his mother moved from his birthplace of Detroit, Michigan to New York City after the death of his father. There, they settled with his uncle William Yawkey, co-owner of the Detroit Tigers. Growing up with his uncle, Tom was around baseball and grew to love the sport. Tom's mother died of influenza when he was just 15 and his uncle adopted him, but sadly also passed just a year later. Tom was left as the inheritor of half his uncle's fortune acquired from lumber, mining, and oil. He also inherited land along the South Carolina coast in Georgetown County where he had frequently visited as a child and developed a love for the outdoors and wildlife. After being raised by a guardian for the remainder of his youth, he attended Yale University where he received an engineering degree and played for the school's intramural baseball team. In 1933, at the age of 30, Tom Yawkey purchased the Boston Red Sox. Both the team and its home stadium of Fenway Park were in a state of disrepair. However, Tom made great investments to turn the team around and restore Fenway Park. Over the course of the next 40 years, the Red Sox would go on to become a source of pride for the city of Boston and the communities of New England. Tom married Jean Yawkey in 1944. The two shared a passion for supporting their communities, and like Tom, Jean dedicated herself to baseball. Together they supported a number of charitable causes in Boston where their beloved Red Sox played and in Georgetown County where they spent winters. Tom designated The Jimmy Fund, a children's cancer research foundation, as the Red Sox official charity and he and Jean both served in leadership roles for the foundation's board. The couple also made a significant contribution towards the creation of Georgetown Memorial Hospital, the rural area's first hospital, and were active in supporting the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Many more of the Yawkey's efforts to support their communities were known only to a few, as they often made donations on the condition of anonymity. When Tom Yawkey died in 1976, he donated the land he inherited to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Tom had spent much of his life acquiring surrounding land for the purposes of preservation and the gift is one the largest ever made to wildlife conservation in the country. It is now called the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center and encompasses 24,000 acres. To care for the land in perpetuity, his will also established the Yawkey Foundation. After Tom's death, his wife Jean took over ownership of the Red Sox. Tom was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980. Jean continued Tom's legacy not only with the Red Sox, but by also guiding the Yawkey Foundation to support more areas of giving based on the causes that were close to her and Tom's hearts, including health care, education, youth and amateur athletics, arts and culture, and human services. Today, the Yawkey Foundation continues to further the philanthropic legacy of both Tom and Jean Yawkey in Boston, MA and Georgetown County, SC.