Thomas H. Fitzgerald, Jr., president of T.H. Fitzgerald & Co., the investment management firm he founded in 1959, died in Augusta, Georgia, on October 13, 2024.  He was 92 years old.

From its very beginning, the firm maintained working offices at 180 Church Street in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and at 79 Wall Street in New York.  Rarely in the spotlight during his more than six decades of work in the investment business, he focused his professional efforts on the quality and depth of client services.

Fresh out of college in 1956 – The University of Connecticut – he launched his stock market career on Wall Street as a junior assistant to street legend Gerald M. Loeb – partner at E.F. Hutton & Co., 61 Broadway, New York, and author of the all-time financial classic, The Battle for Investment Survival.

In 1970, he co-founded the Money Market Directory in New York, still today considered the nation's foremost reference authority on U.S. institutional investors and their portfolio managers. The Directory was eventually sold to McGraw-Hill.

Thomas H. Fitzgerald, Jr. was born in Naugatuck, Connecticut, on May 26, 1932, the son of the late Thomas H. Fitzgerald, Sr. and Lucille M. Bitgood Fitzgerald.  He was educated in Naugatuck public schools – Prospect Street Grammar and Naugatuck High School.  He graduated from the University of Connecticut at Storrs and later completed studies in International Banking and Foreign Exchange at New York University's Graduate School of Business Administration.

Commissioned a U.S. Army Second Lieutenant upon college graduation through the University's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, he completed artillery officer training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and afterwards, combat paratroop training at Fort Benning, Georgia.  He then served with distinction in Korea with I Corps, General Staff Headquarters, where he was promoted to First Lieutenant.

Generations of Naugatuck families will perhaps best remember him as the town's Memorial Day parade chairman.  Notably, he organized and led this parade for 54 consecutive years – no breaks, from the tortuous Vietnam year of 1965, to the pre-pandemic year of 2019 – three generations of patriotic observance.

Highlights of these marching years were the parade participation of the Swedish Royal Lifeguards Dragoons (mounted), direct from Stockholm, Sweden, and the marching band of the British Army Royal Corps of Signals, based in Dorset, England.  When ranking Memorial Day parades, the Pentagon consistently ranked Naugatuck's as Best in Nation.

His survivors include his wife of 39 years, the former Clarice Louise Swan, also a native of Naugatuck; a daughter, Elizabeth F. Molleur, Woodbridge, Connecticut; a son, Thomas H. Fitzgerald, III, Cheshire, Connecticut; and a younger daughter, Alexandra F. Wells, San Francisco, California; and five grandchildren: Andrew and Alexander Molleur; Emily, Henry and Thomas Wells. Also surviving are his sister, Jean F. Slacum, Salisbury, Maryland; his brother, Charles S. Fitzgerald, Ephrata, Pennsylvania; stepsons, Eric Bowles, Atlanta, Georgia; Craig Bowles, Brooklyn, New York; and two step-granddaughters, Audrey Stone and Amelia Bowles.

Private burial will be on Sunday in the All Saints Monie Cemetery, Princess Anne, Maryland.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in his memory to the Naugatuck Veterans Council, PO Box 226, Naugatuck, CT 06770.