What will be your legacy

Tom Steward, longtime friend to the department of music, left a deferred gift to establish the Thomas F. Steward Fund in Jazz Studies.

“My students, colleagues and I are very grateful to our dear friend Thomas F. Steward, who attended hundreds of UNC Jazz Studies concerts over the years and was a friend to us all. His kind gift sustains the day-to-day operations of the program. It enabled our students and faculty to travel to the Jazz Education Network Conference in Dallas, Texas, and to record a collaborative faculty and student CD — 360 o Jazz Initiative, Please Only Tell Me Good News — on Summit Records that is now heard on national jazz radio stations.”

— STEPHEN ANDERSON, professor of composition and jazz studies

Thomas Frost Steward was a structural engineer for JCPenney for 35 years, but his passion was jazz. He played multiple wind instruments; his favorite was the saxophone. A native of Sea Cliff, New York, Steward was an avid sailor who served in the Navy in World War II. He retired to Galloway Ridge at Fearrington in Pittsboro, North Carolina.