The Ven. Thomas Frank Winslow, chaplain to the Bishop of Milwaukee since 2006, died Aug. 23 at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. He was 68. Archdeacon Winslow was a division chaplain for the FBI’s Milwaukee office and worked at Ground Zero in New York for a week after the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001.
Born in 1944, he was a graduate of Cardinal Stritch University and of Nashotah House Theological Seminary. He was ordained deacon in 1983 and priest in 2006, and served all of his vocation in the Diocese of Milwaukee.
He was deacon at St. Philip’s Church, Waukesha, 1983-85; St. David of Wales Church, New Berlin, 1983-95; and St. Alban’s Church, Sussex, 1996-2002. He served as archdeacon of the diocese from 2001 to 2006.
He is survived by Margaret “Peg” Winslow, his wife of 48 years; daughters Catherine Cassidy and Cynthia Pokorny; grandsons Joseph A.W. Cassidy, John T. Cassidy and Benjamin H. Pokorny; a brother, Gerald Winslow; and a sister, Nancy Bean.
Doug Erickson of the Wisconsin State Journal wrote that Archdeacon Winslow was convinced that his working at Ground Zero “triggered serious sinus and bronchial problems, then pneumonia, gastric reflux disease and, ultimately, lung failure.”
“He was confident he’d done God’s work, and that was enough for him,” Peg Winslow told Erickson. “Others will have to decide if he was a victim of 9/11.”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
