PORTLAND – Thomas A. Foley, 51, of Portland, died Wednesday, Feb. 6, at the Maine Medical Center surrounded by his loving family.

Tom, whose boyhood nickname of “Cabbage Head” stayed with him for life, was the son of Thomas J. and Julia V. (Curran) Foley, both of Portland.

He was a 1974 graduate of Portland High School where he was a member of both the football and track teams. Tom graduated from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 1978 with a degree in English. While at Bates, he was selected for the All CBB Football Squad and played for the track team.

He was a school teacher in the Lewiston school system for two years before returning to greater Portland. He had teaching positions at local schools including Portland High School before landing what he called “a great teaching gig” as a seventh grade English teacher at Wescott Junior High School in Westbrook, where he taught for almost 20 years.

He was also a coach. While most of his coaching duties revolved around track events like the shot put, discus and javelin, he also made himself available to coach whenever called upon. He coached boys and girls basketball and was also a last-minute field hockey coach even though he admitted “I’m not sure if I understand the rules.”

In addition to sports, he enjoyed spending time with his family and friends. He was also proud of his Irish roots and had made several trips to Ireland. He was a big guy, but the people who knew him knew he was a “Teddy Bear.” Even when he played football, his coaches told him to stop helping his opponents up off the ground.

He was well-known in the Portland area. He was often seen walking Baxter Boulevard or riding his bike around greater Portland.

A teaching friend said, “Tom had many different worlds. He had his kids and his extended family. Then he had his teaching friends in one world and his Portland friends in another. He also had a group of friends from the Lewiston area from his college days in yet another world.” Once you were a friend of Tom’s he considered you a friend for life.

He stayed in his hometown and worked at a job that helped the community. He had three great kids and a large loving family. But he had great friends and lots of them.

He is survived by three children, Jon-Michael, 21, Kelly, 20, and Shamus, 17, all of Portland. Tom often said “easily the three best things I ever did” when talking about his kids; his sisters, Mary Margaret and her husband, Jim Regan and Katherine and her husband, William Wark, all of Portland; his brothers, John-Philip and his partner, Adele Palencia, of Boston, and Michael and his wife, Holly, of Kingston, R.I.; and numerous nieces and nephews.