Thomas M. Chilton, 73, Was Investment Adviser

Thomas McLemore Chilton of Boston, Chedds Ford, Philadelphia, Pa., and West Chop, known to his friends as Tim, died Tuesday morning, Oct. 18, at his home in Boston. He was 73.

Mr. Chilton was born in 1932, the son of Thomas H. and Cherridah Chilton of Wilmington, Del. He was schooled in Delaware and was graduated from the University of Delaware, attending Wharton for a year before earning his international business degree from the Centre D'Etudes Industrielle in Switzerland.

After a stint in the Army as a second lieutenant and driving a LST on the Alaskan Distant Early Warning Line, he began a career in Dupont's New Ventures Department. An avid sailor and adventurer, in 1955 he was invited to serve as the first mate on the tall ship Tabor Boy of Marion, but decided to marry Maude Williams Urmston instead.

He and Maude had grown up on the same street in Wilmington, but he being four years older totally ignored her until she showed up, at the age of 18, at an important dance where it seems there was an instant connection since he repeatedly cut in on her to the dismay of her other beaus.

Marrying Maude introduced him to Martha's Vineyard, where her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Urmston, had a summer house on West Chop. It was not long before they, too, had a marvelous house on the harbor for summers, and for awhile winters, before they decided to rent a house next to the Woods Hole lighthouse for one winter and commuted back to the Chop on weekends.

His enthusiasms were varied and contagious such as skiing the Haute Route, running a helicopter delivery business that found its niche ferrying Santa Claus at Christmastime, hosting his own radio show for WMVY on the Island, competing on the national doubles squash circuit in his seventies, investing in a chicken farm, writing two books based on oral histories, one about his sailing companion Pat West of Vineyard Haven, collecting antique maps and license plates, first editions, children's books and - most intrepidly - raising six children now aged 37 to 48.

He knew about everything, introduced his friends to automobile salesmen, advised them on good books, the right clubs, knew where to sell antique silver and interested them in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he was delighted to introduce them to Robert Ballard, whom he helped to find his first trade publisher. Tim was interested in everything.

While in his thirties, with six children to raise, he transformed himself into an investment adviser and was devoted to that and his many customers for more than 30 years, bringing the first investment offices to Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Falmouth where he still has people who depend on him. He finished his career at Morgan Stanley in Boston, where he was in the office almost until the last.

His career took him to Geneva, Switzerland, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and pretty much the whole East Coast from Atlanta, Ga., to Boston.

He belonged to the Wilmington Country Club, The Country Club and the University Club in Boston and the West Chop Tennis Club.

His keen interest in everything and what was happening everywhere is what made him understand companies and what was running or ruining them - and that is what made him such a good investor.

For the entrance of the year 2000 he took Maude to Paris where they enjoyed a late dinner, walked through the crowds and saw the fireworks from the Eiffel Tower. Yet Tim was someone who relished the simple wonders life provides - the good story, the cultural nuance and the unusual combination. Until the last he found joy in the shape of an apple, a cold beer in a long neck bottle or the prospect of an evening sail.

Tim is survived by his loving wife of 50 years, his six children, Court Chilton of Boston, Cecily Matthai of Baltimore, Md., Eve Chilton of New York city, Maude Chilton of South Orange, N.J., Edmund Chilton of Wilmington, Del., Mariana Chilton of Philadelphia, Pa., and 15 grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held in Wilmington tomorrow and a party honoring him will be held in Boston later this month.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Lustgarten Foundation (www.lustgartenfoundation.org) and John Hopkins (www.path.jhu.edu/pancreas/). Both organizations fight pancreatic cancer.