Thomas M. Kurata

A Celebration of Life for Thomas will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 30, 2024 at Warren-McElwain Mortuary, Lawrence, KS. A graveside service will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, July 1, 2024 at Oak Hill Cemetery (Veteran’s Section), in Lawrence, KS.

Thomas Milton Kurata of Lawrence passed away July 30, 2023. He was born October 5, 1952, in Lawrence, the fourth child of Fred and Virginia (nee Mefford) Kurata. He earned a double B.A. in Spanish literature and East Asian Studies from Kansas University and a B.S. in chemical engineering from New Mexico University.

Tom led a vigorous and adventurous life, spanning continents and cultures. As a youngster after graduating from Lawrence High School, he found a job working in the Amazon River town of Letitia, Colombia, catching monkey, anacondas, ocelots, and other wildlife for an entrepreneur who sold the quarry to laboratories and zoos in the United States.

After leaving Letitia, Tom took a river boat down the Amazon where he was swindled out of his money. He got off the boat at the Brazilian city of Manaus where he found work teaching English at a bank and earned money to buy a plane ticket home. He also served a brief stint in the U.S. Navy. While working toward his chemical engineering degree, Tom drove a cement truck in the oilfields of west Texas and eastern New Mexico to service drilling rigs.

After completing his degrees, Tom worked for a variety of technology companies that produced software for oil refineries and other industrial processes. Equipped with his knowledge of Spanish and Asian languages and cultures, Tom sold his firms’ software in Latin America, Japan, South Korea and China. Notably, he headed an office in Shanghai, China for three years for Oil Systems, Incorporated.

He was a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and MENSA International IQ Society. He loved to talk about politics.

Tom struggled with multiple bouts of head and neck cancer and prostate cancer starting in 1996 which forced him to retire with disability in Lawrence in 2010.

Tom was an avid sportsman. A shelf of his home study is lined with trophies he won at local tennis tournaments. He was an excellent shot with a shotgun, bagging quail and pheasant on hunting trips with his father and brother Doug. When no longer able to play tennis, Tom took up bowling and frequently broke 200. His greatest love was fishing, especially fly fishing, which he pursued even while using a walker. He asked that his ashes be spread at his favorite fishing holes.

Tom is survived by his wife Sachi, his son Ken and his daughters Naomi, Hana and Blythe.