Thomas E. Baynham, 77, key Dunwoody High football booster

By RICK BADIE

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

After all, the campus was brand new. One thing sorely needed was someone to preside over the football booster club.

Thomas E. Baynham Jr., 77, of Dunwoody, died Monday at his home. Was first booster club president when Dunwoody High opened in the early 1970s.

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In stepped Thomas Baynham.

He’d been a volunteer with the Atlanta Colt Youth Football Association. And Thomas E. Baynham III, his eldest son, was going to play for the Dunwoody High Wildcats.

So Mr. Baynham was going to be around campus -- at practices and definitely games.

“Back then, going to a football game on a Friday night was one of those things everybody did,” said Mr. Baynham of Griffin. “My dad was pretty involved, and I can tell you that, as far as the parental support, he had people who ran the concession stands and did everything possible for the booster club.”

In 1965, Dunwoody was a rural outpost when the Baynhams moved there from Huntsville, Ala. They chose DeKalb County for its schools, and only shopped for homes in Dunwoody.

And when the high school opened, Thomas and Anne G. Baynham volunteered.

“Tom was active with the football program and became the booster club’s first president very willingly,” said Mrs. Baynham, his wife of 54 years. “They needed so much at the time because the school was brand new.”

Thomas E. Baynham Jr., 77, of Dunwoody died Monday from suspected complications of emphysema at his home.

The memorial service is 2 p.m. today at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church. H.M. Patterson & Son, Arlington Chapel, is in charge of arrangements.

Mr. Baynham grew up on a farm in Montgomery County, Tenn. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Austin Peay State University, where he met his wife. He received his master’s degree in the same subject from the University of Tennessee.

Mr. Baynham spent more than 30 years with IBM, first as a systems engineer and later a salesman. Assignments took him to Indianapolis; Huntington, W.Va.; Huntsville, Ala.; and eventually Atlanta.

After retirement, he and IBM colleagues took fishing trips to North Georgia, Florida and Alaska. In later years, the retired IBM workers took their sons along.

For the Baynham boys, fishing with their father was nothing new. They’d done it in farm ponds and lakes in his native Tennessee and in Kentucky, his wife’s home.

As adults, each of Mr. Baynham’s two sons and a son-in-law joined their father on trips to Alaska.

“The last time we went to Alaska, he didn’t do much fishing; he was getting weak,” his son said. “But he would sit in the cockpit and watch us fish, and I think he got as much out of that as fishing himself.”

Additional survivors include another son, Frank Gary Baynham of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; a daughter, Susan B. Miller of Dunwoody; and six grandchildren.