Tom Hepburn

Thomas Houghton Hepburn (November 8, 1905 - April 3, 1921) was the older brother of Katharine Hepburn.

Early life
Thomas Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn and Katharine Houghton Hepburn. He was the brother of Richard Hepburn and Hollywood actress Katharine Hepburn.

Death
On April 3, 1921, while visiting friends in Greenwich Village, Katharine Hepburn, then 14, found her older brother Tom, whom she idolized, hanging from the rafters of the attic by a rope, dead of an apparent suicide. Her family denied that it was self-inflicted, arguing that he had been a happy boy. They insisted that it must have been an experimentation gone awry. It has also been speculated that the boy was trying to carry out a trick that he had seen in a play with Katharine. Hepburn was devastated by his death and sank into a depression. She shied away from children her own age and was mostly schooled at home. For many years she used Tom's birthday (November 8) as her own. It was not until she wrote her autobiography, Me: Stories of my Life, that Hepburn revealed her true birth date.

He was buried and interred in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, CT., in the Hepburn family plot.

November 8

November 8th, his birthdate and every day, he will always be remembered and very sadly missed. On November 8, 2007, today, he would have turned 102.

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