Thomas Keppel Cloetingh

Thomas Keppel Cloetingh, 67, of Phoenixville and Amelia Island, Fla., an entrepreneur and philanthropist, died Thursday, Nov. 19 2020, of complications from Lewy body dementia at his Chester County home. Mr. Cloetingh was diagnosed with the brain disease in 2017. Earlier this month, he was placed in hospice care. Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., he was raised in the Philadelphia suburbs. He graduated from Lower Merion High School in 1971 and earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University in 1975 and an MBA from Drexel University in 1977. Mr. Cloetingh was founder and CEO of the Wayne-based Signal Holdings LLC, a provider of protection programs and repair services for cell phones. His brother Stephen was an executive vice president. Between 1984 and 2008, when the firm was sold to business partner Assurant Inc., the Cloetingh brothers built Signal Holdings into a business with annual revenue of about $330 million and 700 employees in four Pennsylvania locations. After the $250 million sale, the Cloetinghs became part of the merged company’s senior management before moving on. Mr. Cloetingh retired 18 months after the 2008 sale. Beginning in retirement, Mr. Cloetingh was a philanthropist in the fields of education, health, and the environment. He supported Philabundance, Penn Medicine Memory Center’s Lewy body research, refurbishment of the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, and Good Works, a Coatesville nonprofit that helps low-income homeowners repair their houses. Mr. Cloetingh met Joan Edwards and married her in 1976. They had three children whom they raised in Phoenixville. Besides his wife and brother Stephen, he is survived by children Jeffrey Scott Cloetingh, Julie Cloetingh Cady, and Gregory Thomas Cloetingh; six grandchildren; two other brothers; and two sisters.