Thomas Jeffrey Stevens' Obituary
Thomas Jeffrey Stevens was born November 26, 1946, in Appleton, Wisconsin, the second child of Bruce and Betty Stevens. The family moved to rural upstate New York in 1958, and Thom came of age, graduating from Roeliff Jansen Central School in 1965. His teenage years were filled with mowing lawns, playing sports, Boy Scout camping, and working at the Dutch Treat and Swiss Hute. Memorable events included smashing his elbow in basketball practice, requiring an extensive hospital stay, and running his Soap Box Derby car through a barbed wire fence, another traumatic hospital stay. Given carte blanche for ice cream, his boss at the Dutch Treat summer job complained to his mother that Thom ate too much!
Thom attended the New York State University at Delhi and earned an associate degree in hotel/restaurant management in 1967. At the height of the Vietnam war, he enlisted in the Navy and served from 1967 – 1971 as a hospital corpsman stationed at New London, Connecticut. After service, he spent many years working in a variety of middle management positions with Holiday Inns around Maryland and Pennsylvania. A high point was when he managed Tofttree Country Club and Lodge, an upscale resort in State College, Pennsylvania.
Thom moved to Florida in 1984 where he worked a variety of jobs while attending Miami Dade Community College. He completed a paralegal associate degree in 1988 and soon obtained a full-time job with the County Clerk’s office. While there he proudly completed a bachelor’s degree with honors from Barry University. A memorable court procedure class assignment had him drafting a legal complaint for plaintiff Claudette Stevens (their house cat) versus his professor’s dog, for attacking said cat. Experiencing health issues, Thom retired in 2009.
A perk of working at the Miami Dade Clerk of Court’s office in the county courthouse in downtown was meeting a certain young woman for lunch every day. Marina happened to commute to work from the same South Miami Metrorail station. One rainy day she offered Thom a ride home, and it was the start of their love story. This was in 1992, the memorable year Hurricane Andrew visited Miami.
Thom and Marina were married at South Miami United Methodist church in June 1996. The joyful celebration included family members from Colorado, Wisconsin, Maryland as well as Florida. In the years since, Thom and Marina enjoyed frequent travels to Mexico, Georgia, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Maine, Nova Scotia, and Denver.
Thomas is survived by his loving wife, Marina; his son Matthew David Stevens of Miami and daughter Carrie Lynne Farber of Maine; grandson Matthew Ryan Stevens; granddaughters Emily, Bethany and Katlyn Marcin; son-in-law Joaquin Guerrero of Miami; son-in-law Greg Farber of Maine, step-daughter Deborah and her husband Miguel De La Torre, and their children Victoria and Vincent of Denver, Colorado; step-mother Frances Stevens of Ft. Myers, Florida; sister Mary Harrah of Clyde, North Carolina; and brother Robert Stevens of Longmont, Colorado.
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