Born: 11/29/1943
Las Vegas. NV
Died: 02/11/2026
Marlboro, VT
Details of service:
A celebration of life is being planned tentatively for Labor Day weekend 2026 at his Marlboro home.
Please visit https://www.forevermissed.com/thomas-toleno/about for more information.
Thomas Leslie Toleno, 82, of Marlboro, Vermont, died peacefully at home on February 11, 2026, surrounded by the love of his wife, family and friends, and the snow-covered forest he called home. In accordance with his wishes, his family gave him a green burial on his property.
Tom was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, the second son of Richard (Tony) Toleno and Lucile Adams Toleno. His father, a first generation Italian immigrant, had gone west from New Jersey during the Depression to work as a laborer on the Hoover Dam. After the dam’s completion, Richard and Lucile settled in Las Vegas. Here they started a family, with Sid as the eldest followed by Tom, Carol-lynne and Paul. Richard built some of the city’s earliest housing developments as Vegas began its long boom, many of which are still in use.
Tom attended Las Vegas High School, where he met his first wife, Mary. The two attended the University of Nevada Reno together before moving to Ithaca, New York, where Tom pursued graduate studies at Cornell University, and their first son, Tristan, was born. In the early 1970s, Tom and Mary moved to Marlboro, Vermont, where he joined the faculty of Marlboro College alongside Cornell colleagues Tony Barrand and John Roberts. Their second son, Robban, was born soon afterwards in Marlboro in the backseat of their car during a blizzard – with Tom delivering Robban and Tony and John driving. Though Tom and Mary’s marriage ended in divorce, they built and maintained a lifelong loving friendship.
Tom taught at Marlboro College for 48 years. The college’s Oxford-style model of self-directed, interdisciplinary study was a perfect match for his expansive intellect. A synthesizer by nature, he was skeptical of hyper-specialization in his field and prided himself as a teacher of critical thinking. He spent his career helping students, often learning new subjects alongside them. He strived to support everyone he reached to become more fully themselves. Many of his former students remained among his closest lifelong friends.
In 1979, Tom married Sarah Edwards. They had two children together: Yves and Elizabeth. While this marriage also ended in divorce in 1990, his sense of family never faltered. Tom’s definition of family was radically expansive. He worked actively and joyfully to knit his far-flung network together. He maintained deep friendships across generations and continents, and took particular pride in the fact that love, in his life, had consistently proven bigger than social convention — including the enduring friendship he kept with his first wife Mary, and the genuine love he developed for Blake Ross, stepfather to Yves and Elizabeth.
Tom met Andrea Matthews on New Year’s Eve 1998. They were engaged within two weeks and married two months later, with Andi’s son, Daemon Petty, joining the family. Together, Tom and Andi took on a Fulbright-funded residency at the University of Mzuzu in Malawi in 2001. Tom worked to strengthen the institution’s research capacity and stem the loss of talented graduates, while Andi, a music teacher, researched traditional Malawian music, which was then used to teach music literacy to numerous Malawian acquaintances. The two years in Malawi yielded lifelong friendships, including Tom’s Malawian “brother” Joel Luhanga and Joel’s son Emmanuel, who later came to live with Tom and Andi and became like another son to him.This was entirely characteristic of Tom. His home was always open. Over the decades he welcomed Marlboro students, exchange students, and the children of friends into his family — including his Belizean “son” Colin Young, whose father was a Belizean guide he met on college field trips; Irina Gordeyeva, a high school student who became a daughter to both Tom and Andi; and Noon Pokaratsiri, who became his Thai “niece”. Tom loved sharing his life and enriching those around him through experience.
He made a point of taking ALL of his children on multi-week road trips often alongside Marlboro College students and professors. These included trips to the American West, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Belize. With younger generations of the family, Tom intentionally returned to the same places, so that they could hold shared memories of the landscapes he held dear. His gifts as a naturalist and birdwatcher deepened these adventures and shaped the lives of everyone who joined him. Throughout his life, Tom lived his passion for shared experiences. To share his Vegas heritage, he joined and hosted bi-weekly poker games with longtime friends, bringing his “pro” chips to the table. He loved the mathematics of the game and the company it gathered.
When his health began to fail, Andi was an extraordinary and devoted caregiver, and Tom’s many friends truly showed up to offer companionship and care.
Tom is survived by his wife, Andrea Matthews; his children Tristan Toleno (with Susie Webster-Toleno and their sons Owen and Malcolm), Robban Toleno (with partner Amanda Kirk and daughter Anwen), Yves Toleno (with Lauren Smallwood and their sons Hamilton and Theodore), and Elizabeth Llewelyn (with Tim Llewelyn); his stepson, Daemon Petty (with daughters Emma, Hanna, and Alyssa); and his extended family of the heart: Irina Gordeyeva (with Dan Gordeyeva ), Colin Young (with Sharon Young and step-daughter Geanna Perera), Noon Pokaratsiri (with David Goldstein), Emmanuel Luhanga, and Blake Ross. He is also survived by his brother Paul Toleno (with Nancy Toleno) and sister Carol-Lynne Toleno (with Frank White) by his cousins including Tommy DeFalco (with Claudia DeFalco), his Aunt Nora Povia (with family), and by his first wife and lifelong friend, Mary Toleno. He was predeceased by his older brother, Sid Toleno (with surviving Di Stewart).
Tom was a remarkable human: both kind and irascible, hugely generous with his time, ideas, and resources, with a giant intellect, a distinct unwillingness to bow to social norms, and an ability to laugh at his own foibles when they were pointed out to him. His sense of family was expansive, and he built a network of global kinship with colleagues, students, and friends on literally every continent with the exception of Antartica. If you were one of Tom’s people, his loyalty and availability were never in doubt. Tom often said of the people he loved, “I just want them to be happy.” Those who knew him understood he wanted far more than that. Tom truly gave everything of himself to everyone in his orbit – students, family, friends, exchange students – to support them to be fully and truly themselves. This was the animating force of his teaching and mentorship. It was perhaps one of the secrets of how a man who seemed like such an anti-social curmudgeon could sustain so many friendships. He enriched the world with his love, generosity and intellect, and is deeply missed.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Tom’s honor to the Audubon Society (any chapter) or donate your favorite bird loving flower/berry (zone 4, partial shade) to any family member in the spring to be planted in the Tom Toleno memorial garden at his grave site in Marlboro.
