If you care to read more about his private virtues as opposed to the public evils he caused in his lifetime (e.g., forcing an affirmative action policy on the Bay Area Rapid Transit Agency known as BART), here is the long obituary by his family in today's Berkeleyside:
Thomas Lyle Fike was the heart and soul of a loving family and Berkeley community, a man who worked for justice and equality and connected with strangers as easily as friends. He lived a full and beautiful life marked by integrity, generosity, passion and humor. He was always on the right side of history.
Tom was born in San Mateo on Aug. 30, 1931, and died on April 9, 2025, in Berkeley, surrounded by his wife, four sons, three daughters-in-law and eldest granddaughter.
Tom was husband to Sarah Ellen (Barry) Fike; father to Barry, David, John, and Paul; grandfather to Alexandra, Valeria (and husband, Eddie), David (and wife, Kate), Reavey, Aidan, Angie, Melina, and Devin; great grandchildren Nico, Diego, Viktoria, Zoe, and Leo; and father-in-law to Sylvia, Annie, and Andrea. Tom is also survived by his niece Monica Barry Haywood (and her husband Raymond Haywood), nephew Sean Barry, and niece Ann Mason.
Often just called "Fike," Tom was at the epicenter of a beloved community of friends with many overlapping circles. He excelled at making friends — striking up conversations at the gym or in line at the grocery store — and keeping friends for life. He and Sarah loved to travel with their friends and host them in Berkeley and Mendocino.
Tom was a competitive tennis player as well as a member and former president of the board of the Berkeley Tennis Club. Later in his life when his legs gave out and it was hard to play, he would still stand at center court and feed a bucket of balls to his grandkids — inadvertently or not, supplying life lessons: Plant your feet and then pivot. Look alive. Keep your form, no matter what's coming at you.
Tom grew up in San Mateo, the son of Victor Lyle Fike, an upholsterer, and Naomi Fern (Roberts) Fike, a homemaker.
He made deep friendships during his high school years, establishing a lifelong propensity for fierce loyalty to his friends and those he loved.
Just after high school and during the Korean War, Tom was called to military service in Spokane, Washington. During his stint, he served as the public information officer and reporter for his unit as well as the resident tennis star, winning the US Air Force Northwest Tennis Tournament.
Tom started his undergraduate studies at San Jose State University and then the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, before transferring to and completing a B.A. in History at UC Berkeley.
Tom met Sarah Barry in a Russian history class at Cal. He empathized with Sarah, who arrived to the Dwinelle Hall lectures late and out of breath, thinking that she must be racing from another class across campus. Of course, he would quickly come to realize that this was Sarah's first class of the day and she was simply, chronically late (thus the origin of infamous "Fike-time").
Tom and Sarah married at Berkeley's St. Mary Magdalene in June 1956. The couple lived in Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Los Angeles before settling permanently on High Court in Berkeley in 1965.
With four young boys under the age of six, Tom worked full-time at Wells Fargo Bank and attended night school at Golden Gate University to pursue his law degree. In early 1964, he took and passed the California bar exam early — even before finishing law school — and received a standing ovation from his peers in his last law class.
Due to his work and other obligations, Tom did not attend his law school graduation ceremony and skipped picking up his diploma. Some 50 years later, his son, David Fike, was appointed president of Golden Gate University and, upon hearing this story, presented Tom on his 85th birthday with a new diploma and his law school transcript.
In 1964, following a suggestion from their friend Pete Walker, Tom and Sarah purchased a ramshackle house, built in the 1880s, in Mendocino. In so doing, they created a legacy that lasts to this day. It is a place of incomparable natural beauty, and the house itself is the site of enduring family bonds and friendships.
The Fike house is stitched into the tapestry of many families and friends who have found respite, laughter and beauty in Mendocino. Together, Tom and Sarah created a true locus of community.
After graduating from law school in mid-1964, Tom became actively involved with the East Bay Conference on Religion and Race. In December of that year, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) filed a notice with the House of Representatives to challenge the November election in the three congressional districts where Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine and Victoria Gray ran on the Freedom Ballot. The challenge was based on the fact that the electoral laws and practices in Mississippi at that time prevented a vast number of Black citizens from registering and/or voting freely, the election was fraudulent.
In early 1965, roughly 150 lawyers, including Tom, volunteered to travel to Mississippi to take depositions that later would be presented to Congress as evidence of the fraudulent election. The lawyers' trips were organized by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in addition to other leading civil rights organizations. Tom and the other lawyers traveled to the same areas where the three civil rights activists, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, had been murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan just a few months prior. It goes without saying that Sarah feared a great deal for Tom's safety while he was away and she cared for four little boys at home in Berkeley.
Congress eventually rejected the filing by MFDP to challenge the election. But the depositions taken by Tom and the other lawyers, along with the disciplined non-violent protests led by MFDP, played a key role in the ultimate passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act just a few months later in August 1965.
The depositions have been safeguarded and are now located in the National Archives. Many of the lawyers who went to Mississippi at this time went on to become politicians and judges, and take on important leadership positions in their communities. Many who were interviewed later in life about their experiences, including Tom, said they felt it was some of the most important work they ever did.
As a leader in the Bay Area civil rights community, Tom later hosted Fannie Lou Hamer during her visit to the Bay Area.
Because of his work with the East Bay Conference on Religion and Race, Tom was recruited to lead the Alameda County Legal Aid Society in a more progressive direction, leveraging significant resources for serving low-income communities newly appropriated as part of the federal government's "War on Poverty." At Legal Aid, one of Tom's many accomplishments was to sue the Oakland Fire Department to successfully force them to allow women firefighters in their ranks. Around this time, he also co-chaired the Justice on Bay Area Rapid Transit (JOBART) coalition, which protested BART's hiring practices and successfully pushed the agency to agree to a model affirmative action program. Also, around this time, Tom reportedly gave Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale his first paid community organizing job.
In 1971, after leading the Legal Aid Society for several years, Tom started practicing law for the Alameda County Public Defenders out of their Oakland and Berkeley offices. In 1975 Tom left the Public Defender's office and worked in private practice out of the Tribune Tower in Oakland. He later moved to a different private practice firm in downtown Oakland and eventually began practicing more civil law than criminal law. In addition to serving countless clients from diverse communities throughout the Bay Area, Tom served as legal counsel to friends, family and others in need — often providing support without fanfare or pay.
Tom coached several of his son's Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) sports teams and fostered their lifelong love of team sports. He also demonstrated competitiveness and camaraderie by playing basketball, running multiple marathons and playing tennis throughout his life.
Year after year, Tom hosted pre-game gatherings at the High Court house for Cal Football, which always consisted of him grilling "Fike Dogs." Later, the pre-Cal game festivities migrated to the parking lot behind Boalt Hall, a shorter walk to Memorial Stadium. Raising his sons to follow Cal sports helped them, as John put it, "not be too attached to the outcome of a game, and be okay with losing."
Tom bought a 1954 cherry-red MG convertible in the mid-1960s and enjoyed it when it was still running. He would sometimes take his boys out around town with the top down. After close to three decades of the MG being buried in the garage, Tom had it restored and periodically drove it at events like the Solano Stroll and Fourth of July parade in Mendocino. It created an even greater sense of pride when it became a family tradition for his kids and grandkids to drive the MG away from their wedding ceremonies.
Tom was hugely proud of his grandchildren, who called him "Grandpa" or "Papa." He loved to receive and wear t-shirts and caps from their colleges, frequently proclaiming one school his favorite, based solely on who was in the room or what he was wearing at the time.
He would often take or pick up the grandkids from school or meet them for lunch at the Cheeseboard. Vacations with Grandpa to Disneyland, Hawaii and Santa Cruz are unforgettable memories, as were his unannounced visits when a few of his grandchildren lived on the East Coast because, as he would say, "I loved seeing their surprised little eyes."
He consistently and generously followed the adage "if Papa goes, Papa pays," picking up the tab for extended family restaurant meals, bagels for a weekend brunch, Chinese food takeout for the family, and even the turkey for Thanksgiving meals.
Tom's love of life could never be contained. His passion, emotionally expressed in countless settings — when rooting for the Cal Bears, barking at his kids to "KNOCK IT OFF" when rough play or arguments got out of hand, shouting when he couldn't find his glasses, or fighting for the "underdog" — was aptly captured in his favorite and often-worn t-shirt, which read: "I Yell Because I Care!"
He carried this passion until the end and to now, and as one of his sons said, "He's everywhere, in us and all around us."
In lieu of flowers and to honor Tom, the family is requesting donations to the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
5 comments:
I hope that,after a life of anti-American,anti-White behavior,his cause of death was "hanging from a really tall tree" --for treason.
--GRA
Reminded me that a few months ago, CLASSIC IMAGES celebrated a street being named after the Communist actor-singer Theodore Bikel (In California, I'm certain.) Of his role in the heavy-handed TWILIGHT ZONE episode "Four 0'Clock," Bikel said he really enjoyed Serling giving him the opportunity to play "a right-wing nut-job."
I recently suffered through a GUNSMOKE episode which guest-starred Bikel, courtesy of the show's new season 10 producer, Philip Leacock, who wanted more "social relevance" in the series. He sang constantly through the episode, in a jarringly modern style, and he was surely a better actor than singer! (Though everyone in the show kept saying how wonderful he was!)
-RM
PS- How about highlighting my recent post regarding Saul Alinsky being promoted on TV circa 60 years ago?
RM: "PS- How about highlighting my recent post regarding Saul Alinsky being promoted on TV circa 60 years ago?"
I'd love to, RM, but which one was it?
At present, I've got four (or more?) of your mini-essays waiting to go up, one on Richard Boone during his Paladin salad days; one about him afterwards (including a mention of an unsupported, "despicable" story in the "autobiography" of a great Hollywood actress [although I haven't purchased the "thing," I know exactly who and what you're talking about, and I own a stack of such phony Hollywood biographies, most of which I can't even properly review, because that would entail letting the "author"/editor/agent succeed at defaming the subject and others]; at least one about the making of Danger Man/Secret Agent/The Prisoner (The Saga of John Drake); and one which you apologetically and unnecessarily called a "rant," which I liked very much, but about which I can recall nothing else.
I'm a huge fan of your work.
As I said to GRA recently, "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you."
-RM
Just for curiosity's sake- why would the actress make such an allegation if there was no truth to it? Because she just couldn't stand the guy? Boone was arrogant, physically homely, an alcoholic, and a leftist, and was reportedly abusive to an actress on HAVE GUN- so it seems POSSIBLE that he did what he was accused of. I certainly have no trouble believing it of the other actor named in the accusation, who was a total sleazebag! And if, as you hinted, the book was ghostwritten, again why defame someone in that manner?
I still agree with you about not elaborating on the story- someone interested in the details can look it up.
I'll add- despite all the stories about "gentle giants," I've read too many anecdotes about physically large actors being bullies and abusers to discount the possibility of Boone behaving likewise.
-RM
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