Dr. Thomas Byrd was born at Seaway Hospital in Trenton in 1962, and raised and schooled in Trenton.  He graduated from Trenton High School in three years as Salutatorian in 1979 and went on to the University of Michigan where he achieved both Bachelor of Science and Medical Doctor degrees in a special six-year program called Inteflex.  He received his M.D. in 1985 just after his 23rd birthday and went on to a year of internal medicine internship and a three-year ophthalmology residency at Henry Ford Hospital.

Dr. Byrd went on to the finest cornea fellowship in the world, a rigorous two-year program at the LSU Eye Center in New Orleans.  He trained there under internationally known corneal and refractive surgery pioneers, Drs. Herbert E. Kaufman and Marguerite McDonald.  LSU was the birthplace of excimer laser treatment of sighted humans, and Dr. Byrd was a co-investigator on the FDA study of Safety and Efficacy of the VISX laser along with Dr. Marguerite McDonald.  He has taught and published on the subject.  During the second of his two years of fellowship, Dr. Byrd's responsability was to manage the excimer laser program at LSU.

Dr. Byrd then returned to the Henry Ford Health System in 1991 as Director of the Cornea Service where he was responsible for teaching cornea and refractive surgery to the residents, and credentialing the other surgeons on staff.  He left Henry Ford in 1996 to head the Byrd Eye Clinic, formerly known as the Holland Eye Center.