Tom Falvey with a group of Boy Scouts
Tom Falvey grew up in Western Massachusetts but found his way to the South Carolina State Museum where he has been a fixture for over two decades. While visiting the Museum of Science during a Boston field trip he witnessed a huge Faraday cage throwing massive sparks from the giant Van de Graaff generator on display there.
“It was one of the coolest things I ever saw,” he remembers.
Tom planned on playing jazz trumpet for a living. His father played organ and his mother sang in the church choir. “I grew up with music. Once it gets into your blood, you can’t get rid of it,” he says.
He attended North Texas State University in Denton and quickly realized he wasn’t going to make it as a trumpet player. The competition was too tough. So he switched to his second choice.
On the first Earth Day, Tom was a Boy Scout collecting trash.
“The environment was my second passion but also turned out to be my backup plan,” he said.
Tom completed his studies with a degree in communications at Massachusetts’s Westfield State College (now University) before heading to Gainesville to get his master’s in environmental education at the University of Florida.
Tom Falvey’s lab coat
In 1996, after graduation, Tom found work in Wilmington, where his wife was attending college. He accepted a job at Cape Fear Museum, specifically the Michael Jordan Discovery Gallery as a science educator.
“I was able to create all these fun family science programs,” he said.
By focusing on questions fourth graders might ask, Tom educated himself in various subjects that helped his teaching while also improving his knowledge.
“It was a fun four-and-a-half years,” he remembers.
He joined the South Carolina State Museum in 2000 and worked into 2004 before taking a job in Durham, N.C. he thought fit better. After an 11-month hiatus, he returned and has been in Columbia since. He retired from full time work in December 2024 but has remained on staff.
“I remember my first time talking to a group about a subject I wasn’t familiar with and the nerves associated with that feeling,” Tom says, “…just learning how to become more prepared every time I stood in front of a group and how much that’s helped me in every way.
“Now I can be sitting on the floor talking with five-year-olds about science and also standing before a legislative committee discussing the importance of museum education. I’ve also become more comfortable fund raising. If you believe in what you’re saying and trust that it’s true and can get that across, it doesn’t matter what your subject is.”
Tom also talks about how the importance of working on the Windows to New Worlds Project in 2014. “I got to bolt the telescope together,” he said. “The first night we had that thing operational, we all looked at Mars. I had barely looked through a telescope in my life before then. Just the excitement of that small group of us making that and thinking about the potential was so exciting.”
Tom has collected a lot of memories and lots of memorabilia over the quarter century he’s been working at the state museum. His lab coat documents his journey. The chest area is filled with numerous pins and badges, each with a distinct story. An American flag adorns the right bicep and the lower skirt; front and back is lined with patches, decals, and other collectables. The upper back portion features autographs by people with varying levels of notoriety. Tom spoke of two of those folks.
“Meeting Charlie Duke was wonderful,” he said. “I was alive when Apollo 11 happened, so my parents dragged me to the TV. At a very early age one of the first Southern accents I heard was Charlie Duke talking those fellows down to the moon. I had no concept that one day we would be having coffee together and he would share the story of how the guys put Typhoid Mary on his feed because he’d had German measles during the previous mission.
“Getting to share some of those personal experiences with those folks isn’t about their fame; it’s about their personal experiences. I was Neil deGrasse Tyson’s personal chauffer back in ’07. He was brought to town to do several talks. It was great. He had the first iPhone I ever saw. He signed my lab coat: ‘Keep reaching for the stars.’”
While discussing the museum’s 35th Anniversary Celebration, Tom talked about the extent of the talent brough in to help with the celebration, saying, “We had the Catawba Drum Circle, the Claflin Gospel Choir, and the Fort Jackson Jazz Band come in to play. We also had swing dancers here. I saw so many people super engaged, taking in that breadth of information and having a great time. You can get that here. The museum can do that. You get to see people from all walks of life here.”
When Tom was asked to name a moment that stands out during his career, he didn’t hesitate, saying, “When I was in graduate school my degree was in Teaching Environmental Science through Music. I created an activity in which I was cutting old poster tubes into lengths to make musical instruments. It’s basically a balafon using tubes. I’ve carried that activity forward through different jobs.
“I cut them so we could play Pachelbel’s Canon in D. This was before someone invented the commercial version, Boomwhackers®. We’d go through the math involved and then play it. We played it, and I’ll never forget I saw a mom cry when her child was playing that instrument. It really affected me.” Tom lost his train of thought and it took a second for both of us to regain composure.
He continued, “You kinda see that immediate impact that you’ve done something. I see that with all our educators when I go down and look at what they do at summer camp. These kids are having a great time. They’re learning. They’re interacting. Those are the experiences, and they’re so simple.
“Museum work has been and still is fascinating because I’m constantly learning from my peers, museum visitors, and all the people who make South Carolina’s history come to life.”
When asked what one thing he would want included in this story, Tom replied, “Keep moving in the direction of the place you want to be. When I think about my career, this might have been a backup plan but everything I did within that backup plan moved me in the direction of a place I wanted to be.
“There are questions you have in your life that you can’t answer right now but if you move toward that question, you will get answers. I have found that’s been true of this career, that I have moved in the direction of where I wanted to be. If you just accept that life will do that, you’ll have opportunities to find joy and live an enriched life.”
For more information on the South Carolina State Museum, visit scmuseum.org.
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