Thomas “Tom” Y. Keesler
Thomas Yates Keesler, 69, an Asheville-area resident for more than a quarter-century, died Sunday, March 16, 2025, at FirstHealth Hospital in Pinehurst after a long struggle with cancer.
The funeral will be Saturday, March 29, at 2 p.m. at historic Zion United Methodist Church, 398 Zion Church Road, Mt. Gilead, NC 27306, where Tom was a member, with the Rev. Jimmy Anderson officiating. Burial will be in the church cemetery, followed by an outdoor reception for family and friends in the church’s pavilion.
Tom was born Dec. 1, 1955, in Charlotte to Lenoir Chambers Keesler and Elizabeth Lewis Keesler. After catching his first fish at age 5, he began a long love affair with fishing and hunting.
He also played soccer, basketball, and tennis at Charlotte Latin School, where he graduated in 1974. As a Davidson College freshman, he was a member of the rifle team.
A ranked NC junior tennis player, he transferred to the University of North Carolina at Asheville as a sophomore on a tennis scholarship and spent the next 26 years in the Asheville area.
He earned a bachelor of arts degree from UNC-A with majors in psychology and monetary economics, a master’s in clinical psychology from Western Carolina University and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
He launched a 37-year career in psychotherapy, counselling a wide range of clients, but especially children and adolescents. His first jobs in mental health were at Appalachian Hall, the longtime Asheville mental hospital. Including internships, he worked with state government facilities such as Broughton Hospital in Morganton and the Juvenile Evaluation Center in Swannanoa, and with county and regional mental health facilities and community health centers providing services in Buncombe, Burke, McDowell, Polk, Rutherford, and other Western NC counties. At various times he also worked in private practice, either individually or as part of a group.
In 1989, he edited the Western North Carolina Psychological Association newsletter.
He served as chair and as vice-chair of the NC Association for the Management and Treatment of Sexual Offenders.
In 2001 he married Donna McRae, and in 2002 they moved to the Montgomery County area, where she grew up and where he spent the rest of his life. In those years he worked primarily in private practice, including with state youth development facilities like the former Stonewall Jackson Training School at Concord, and with the Montgomery County schools and counselling firms in Montgomery and Randolph counties.
Tom had a warm smile, an engaging personality, and a perceptive, genuine care for other human beings.
In more recent years, he helped staff Montgomery County’s Pee Dee Convenience Site, a recycling center, and developed a business repairing and selling old fishing rigs.
He was a member of the Mt. Gilead Civitan Club. He taught Sunday school and sang in the choir at Zion UMC and served as treasurer of the Methodist Men.
In 2014, he moved into a small former hunting lodge in the woods outside Mt. Gilead, a perfect base for hunting and fishing. He hunted mostly small game like squirrels, rabbits, dove and waterfowl.
He accumulated more than 30 certificates from the NC Wildlife Resources Commission’s North Carolina Angler Recognition Program by catching individual fish species of a required size from small fish like a 7.25-inch Green Sunfish in 2001 to large ones like a 34-pound Blue Catfish in 2015. The NCWRC awarded him a patch and a certificate recognizing him “with the lifetime distinction of Master Angler.”
Tom loved history and telling stories. With assistance from the Yarborough’s Roundtable, a Civil War history group in adjoining Davidson County, he traced a line of crack rifle shooters in the family back to a great-great-grandfather in a special Confederate marksmen’s unit.
He was a lonely liberal Democrat in conservative Montgomery County. One of his greatest joys late in life was fishing with a local group of African American men.
In 2020, Tom had half a lung removed at the Pinehurst hospital because of cancer. Health problems multiplied in subsequent years. He returned to the hospital March 11 and died five days later. His son, two brothers, a neighbor, and Donna, his ex-wife, were with him when he passed away
Survivors include his son, Michael Edward Keesler of Philadelphia; Michael’s two daughters; three brothers, Lenoir Chambers Keesler Jr. and David Culver Keesler of Charlotte and William Lewis Keesler of Lexington; six first cousins; neighbor and close friend Bruce Millen, who regularly checked on Tom; ex-wife and friend Donna McRae Keesler; and their families.