Thomas Munford Boyd

T. Munford Boyd faculty portrait

Thomas Munford Boyd (September 25, 1899 - September 2, 1985) of Roanoke, was vice president of the Virginia Glee Club during the Glee Club 1920-1921 season. A law student at the University of Virginia during this season, he had his bachelors degree from the University (graduating in 1920) and was a member of Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Delta Phi, Skull and Keys, Eli Banana, PK, the German Club, and served as a reviewing editor on College Topics,all despite the fact that he was almost totally blind, having contracted scarlet fever at the age of 3.

Boyd received his law degree from the University in 1923 and moved on to practice and teach law, teaching at both Washington and Lee and the University of Virginia. As a professor at Virginia, he was one of the first recipients of the Thomas Jefferson Award, in 1957, and was known for his defense of the Honor System. He also received the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in 1970. He retired from the faculty of the University in 1970 and died in 1985. He is buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery. A law professorship was endowed in his name by IT&T in 1977.

His official UVA Law School biography notes:

Emerson Spies wrote about “Munny” Boyd, as he was known to his friends and colleagues: “Munny had the answer to almost any legal question that arose. The Virginia Code was his Bible; the reported Virginia cases were lodged firmly in his fertile and retentive mind. He was then and continued to be a living encyclopedia of the law.” Spies also noted, “His other senses were so acute that his blindness seemed almost an asset.” Describing Boyd’s unique wisdom, Hardy Dillard once wrote, “A colleague once put it well in a single memorable sentence: ‘Munny,’ he said, has taught us all to see.’ He has taught us to see by sensing, as he does, the finer and nobler conditions of the human condition which give perspective to life and temper its less attractive features.”