Thomas "Tom" Calloway Lea III (July 11, 1907 – January 29, 2001) was an American muralist, illustrator, artist, war correspondent, novelist, and historian.

[6] While painting a mural in El Paso Federal Courthouse (Pass of the North), he met and married his second wife, Sarah Catherine Beane (née Dighton), in July 1938.

[citation needed] While painting his courthouse mural, Lea also met artist José Cisneros and they were able to connect as friends and business contacts.

[12] In 1940, he applied for and won the Rosenwald Fellowship, but by the end of the summer of 1941, he got a telegram from LIFE asking him to go to sea with the United States Navy on a North Atlantic Patrol.

He went on deployment with the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in the Pacific Ocean in 1942, where he met the famous Army Air Corps pilot Jimmy Doolittle.

In 1943, during his visit to China, he met Theodore H. White, and he painted the portraits of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong Mei-ling; and General Claire Lee Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers.

The battle, which saw the Marines suffer heavy losses amidst fierce Japanese resistance, became the subject of controversy due to the questionable strategic value of the island.

The life size work (71" × 30¼") was based on a photograph, taken of Sarah in the backyard of their home at 1520 Raynolds Boulevard in El Paso, that he had carried in his wallet throughout the war.

[18][19] After finishing his last novel, The Hands of Cantu (an account of horse training in 16th-century Nueva Vizcaya) in 1964, Lea traveled to Boston to meet with his publishers, Little, Brown and Company.

[20] Right before finishing this work, Baylor University paid tribute to his writing by bestowing him, and his long-time friend Carl Hertzog, with an honorary doctorate's in literature.

[21][22] The El Paso Museum of Art established its Tom Lea Gallery in 1996, and in 1997 he was honored as a Fellow in the Texas State Historical Association.