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Alum Tom Spicer of Rock Springs was a nationally renowned board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon. Ifyou asked him what he loved, he would say the University of Wyoming. “Dr. Tom” was a Wyoming guy through and through. He loved the state, its university, its history, and its people.
That’s why he and his family established two funds—the Thomas E. and Deborah J. Spicer Excellence Fund in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Dr. Thomas and Deborah Spicer Excellence Fund in Global Engagement—with philanthropy from his estate.
“He wore the bucking horse on his lapel proudly all the time,” says his son Justin Spicer, a financial advisor in Rock Springs. “He was a Wyoming Cowboys fan, but he was a bigger fan of just the university. It was such an honor and privilege for him to serve the university and be part of it. I just don’t think that you’d ever find a bigger cheerleader for the university than my dad.”
The Spicer family’s connection toUW goes back to Tom’s parents, Eldon and Beverly. The Spicer family established the Eldon and Beverly Spicer Chair in Environment and Natural Resources in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at Beverly’s behest inmemory of her late husband. Eldon was a UW alum and a rancher who advocated for stakeholder involvement and consensus building to resolve land use issues.
“We were sheep ranchers in Sweetwater and Sublette counties all the way up until the mid-60s, when the ranch was sold,” Justin says. “My grandpa was a diplomat—just an incredible guy at figuring out how to solve conflict.”
The first of its kind in the nation when it was created in 2002, the Spicer Chair advances leadership, training, and scholarship in natural resource collaborative decision-making in Wyoming. It supports research and outreach in natural resource science and policy.
Dr. Steve Smutko served as the Spicer Chair until his retirement in 2024. The new chair is Matt Hamilton, an interdisciplinary environmental policy scientist whose work focuses on collaborative governance and multistakeholder decision-making in natural resource management.
The chair was further supported by gifts from the Spicers during Tom’s lifetime, and the Spicer family supported many other areas across campus, including athletics, facilities, scholarships, study abroad, the arts, the libraries, and multiculturalism. Then, Tom and his family set up hisestate to create the Spicer excellence fund to further support the chair and the Haub School as well as the fundfor Global Engagement.
The motive behind the GlobalEngagement fund is that it supports students “getting to see other view points and understand different political opinions and different parts of the world,” Justin says. “My dad thought all of that was so important.”
Justin continues, “He recognized that there were a lot of students who were not as fortunate to be able to just have those kinds of experiences so that they could have a really well-rounded experience and come out of the university really understanding lots of viewpoints.”
Tom was born on Independence Day 1948 in Rock Springs. He earned his bachelor’s in zoology from UW in 1970 with honors. While at UW, he married his soulmate Debbe (Harrell), who earned her bachelor’s degree from UW in microbiology. They have three kids—Justin, Sarah,and Emily.
After graduation, Tom attended medical school at the University of Washington through the WWAMI program, and the couple began a new adventure in Seattle. Debbe worked in a lab so that Tom could go to medical school. They were “just poor as church mice” during that time, Justin says—Justin credits his mom with the great financial position they were in coming out of medical school. “My mom is one of the smartest people you’ll ever see,” Justin says. “She discovered a virus in an independent study class at UW.”
Tom graduated with his M.D. in 1974 and then did residencies for internal medicine in Kansas, for general surgery in Salt Lake City, and for plastic surgery in Texas, where he served as chief resident. He became a board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and it became his life’s work. In 1986, the Spicers moved their family back to Rock Springs, where Tom opened his own practice. He also served as chief of staff at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County.
“We immediately started coming down for football games, He almost immediately got involved with the university. He kept adding to that resume as he was building his practice.”
“We immediately started coming down for football games,” Justin says. “He almost immediately got involved with the university. He kept adding to that resume as he was building his practice.”
Tom loved being a surgeon becauseof the rigor required, and the livesof hundreds of his former patientswere enriched by his exceptionalskill and bedside manner. “Hewas a pretty hard-driving guy—he worked hard,” Justin says. Heperformed everything from routinecosmetic surgery to helping womengoing through breast cancer, burnpatients, people with catastrophichand injuries, and kids who wereborn with cleft lips and palates—one of Tom’s favorite cases.
He especially enjoyed helping kids. He and pediatric dentist Grant Christensen flew throughout the state to put on a cleft palate clinic. “They would treat kids for what otherwise can be a really debilitating, really tough kind of a disability,” Justin says. “He loved being a doctor to little kids.”
Tom served on the UW Foundation board, the UW Alumni Association board, the Haub School Advisory Board, and the Western Wyoming Community College board, among many others. In 1997, Gov. Jim Geringer appointed him to the UW Board of Trustees where he served as president, and then he was reappointed by Governor Dave Freudenthal. As a trustee, Tom relished the honor of presenting his daughters their bachelor’s degrees.
“In the end, he was a good guy,” Justin says. “And I think if you cango to your final resting place and that’d be on your epitaph—being a good person—that’s not bad. He was really a one-of-a-kind.”
