Thomas Grimes, a Boston University Security Assistant for 18 years, passed away suddenly on Tuesday, March 11 of pneumonia. He was 44.
Although Grimes worked at several dorms throughout campus in his time at BU, he most recently worked the 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. night shift at The Towers dormitory.
Well-respected among his co-workers, Grimes was also very popular among students.
Samuel Williams, a security assistant who knew and worked with Grimes for more than three years, remembered how residents of The Towers would gather in the building’s entrance-way at the start of Grimes’ shift to greet the friendly guard.
‘There would always be a crowd of three to four students waiting to talk with him,’ Williams said.
Williams remembered how much respect Grimes had for students, and how his affection for them was reciprocated. Even after graduation, students remembered his kindness.
‘Graduates would come back to see him,’ Williams said. ‘They remembered how well he treated them.’
Al Morse, operations manager at the Office of Housing, echoed Williams’ thoughts that Grimes was high in character and very involved in the lives of students.
‘He was not only a very good employee, but he was also a very fine gentleman and a distinguished person,’ Morse said. ‘He was the type of person who always watched out for the well-being of the students.’
Formerly of Syracuse, N.Y., Grimes attended Syracuse University and Westbury College in New York. Since early childhood, he had an interest in theater, plugging his talent in at the young age of eight to write his first play. As an adult, Grimes was an established actor, poet, playwright and director.
Performing locally, as well as out-of-state, Grimes played characters such as Malcolm X. Grimes saw some of his own scripts come to fruition as plays, and he even co-founded Boston’s Black Folks Theater.
Though he sometimes talked about his passion for acting in the BU guard booth, and occasionally took time off from work to travel to a show, few of his co-workers realized how talented or successful he was in the business.
‘In some ways, I didn’t realize how accomplished he was,’ Morse said.
Son of Wilbur and Ella M. Grimes and grandson of Lue Ellen Fagan of Syracuse, N.Y., Grimes is survived by his siblings, Tina M. Grimes-Auguste of Boston, Gwen Riley-Jones of Atlanta and Blair Grimes and Clyde Carter of Syracuse, N.Y.
Funeral services were held for Grimes on Sunday, March 16 at the Eliot Church in Roxbury.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
