TOMPKINS

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 04:28:05 :

Independent Journal
Saturday, December 9, 1972
Page 6

PHILIP W. TOMPKINS
Dies At 99

Private funeral was held today for Philip W. Tompkins, a 99-yer-old native Marinite who died Wednesday in the same San Anselmo home in which he was born.

Tompkins, who would have been 100 years old in April, succumbed after a short illness, although he long had been afflicted with arthritis.

Tompkins, an analytical chemist and chemical engineer who had retired two years ago from Curtis and Tompkins, a San Francisco firm he established before the turn of the century, lived in San Anselmo all his life.

The funeral was scheduled at the home, 52 Park Way, this morning.

Tompkins, whose late sister, Ethel H. Tomkins, founded the Marin Humane Society, was one of the oldest members of San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, joining in 1911.

With his father, M. M. Tompkins, a banker, Tompkins was aboard the ferryboat San Rafael when it collided with the ferry Sausalito No. 2 and sank off Alcatraz Island in 1901. Both slipped into the water and were rescued by a lifeboat.

In an interview several years ago, Tompkins recalled early-day Marin. “It was pretty country then, well wooded… Deer were plentiful and quail were abundant… As a boy, I rode my horse to San Rafael to a private school.”

Tompkins was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.

Burial was in Mount Tamalpais Cemetery, San Rafael.