Courtesy of Yash Roy

Alder Tom Ficklin DIV ’75 — a fixture of New Haven life who spent just over two years as a local legislator after a long and public career in media, advocacy and communications — died last week at age 75.

His death came unexpectedly at home on Wednesday evening, his wife, Julia Ficklin, told the New Haven Independent. Tom Ficklin represented Ward 28, the eastern part of Beaver Hills, on the Board of Alders and hosted an interview show on the radio station WNHH.

Local leaders voiced grief in the days following his death and emphasized a longtime devotion to New Haven that found expression in his varied endeavors.

“Tom’s warmth, sincerity, and dedication to New Haven was unparalleled, and he was a personal friend and inspiration to so many of us,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who has long represented New Haven in Congress, wrote in a statement on Friday. “New Haven has lost a guiding light, but his spirit and impact will continue to inspire us for generations to come.”

As an alder, Ficklin took an active role in addressing public safety concerns in his neighborhood and pushed for New Haven to formally apologize for impeding the creation of a Black college in the city in the nineteenth century.

A live conversation on Friday on “The Tom Ficklin Show,” whose name is set to change after his prerecorded episodes come out, opened with a tribute to Ficklin from Georgia Goldburn, the executive director of the childcare nonprofit Hope For New Haven.

“Tom was seemingly everywhere in New Haven,” Goldburn said. “He was a voice for the voiceless, a champion for the overlooked and a storyteller, chronicling the rich panoply of New Haven with his words and his photos.”

Born in Pittsburgh, Ficklin attended the Choate School, now called Choate Rosemary Hall, and then studied political science as an undergraduate at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He arrived in New Haven in 1971 as a student at the Yale Divinity School, on whose Alumni Board he would eventually sit.

Ficklin worked at the Urban League of Greater New Haven early in his career, and later for Empower New Haven, an anti-poverty organization. In 2008, he founded his own marketing firm, the Ficklin Media Group, after having edited and revitalized the Inner-City News in the 1990s.

Paul Bass, the New Haven Independent’s founder and former editor, who reported at the time for the now-defunct New Haven Advocate, recalled seeing Ficklin with his camera at events across town — from press conferences outside of Yale’s Woodbridge Hall to local sports leagues.

“He was always fun to talk to, because he’s a very deep thinker,” Bass said. “He had a certain shyness when you talked to him at first, but when you talked to him more, it revealed someone who thought so deeply about big issues and cared a lot about the city.”

In more recent years, through his Facebook account and email blasts, Ficklin “was a news outlet of his own,” Bass added. He said Ficklin was among the first people he thought of to host a show after establishing WNHH Community Radio in 2015.

Ficklin joined the Board of Alders in July 2022 after the previous Ward 28 alder stepped down. He ran for reelection unopposed the next year, telling Bass that the job had “resurrected” him in his seventies.

Ward 29 Alder Brian Wingate, whose seat neighbored Ficklin’s, recalled that the two often shared candy and jokes during board meetings, as Ficklin brought an inquisitive style to trying to solve his community’s problems.

“A lot of these homelessness and public safety issues deal with the Black and brown people,” said Wingate, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, of which Ficklin was a member. “Alder Ficklin, he was about his people.”

In August, Ficklin and Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93, the city historian, proposed a resolution that would apologize for an 1831 municipal action that prevented the creation of a Black college in New Haven.

Befitting its sponsor on the board, the resolution’s text begins with no less philosophical a premise than “Knowledge is power.” The measure remains under consideration.

Mayor Justin Elicker wrote in a statement that he “extends his deepest condolences to the entire Ficklin family,” calling Ficklin “an incredibly kind and warm individual in all his interactions with others, which we could use a lot more in our politics and society today.”

A special election to fill the Ward 28 alder seat for the remainder of the term — until the end of 2025 — will occur by Nov. 23, according to the city charter.