Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Olie Stonerook was an Ohio native, but he bonded with Hernando County and its people, his friends say.
By DAN DeWITT
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 29, 2002
SPRING HILL -- Olie Stonerook moved to Hernando County 32 years ago and took to it instantly.
"He loved this county. He never wanted to live anywhere else after he moved here," said his wife, Stephanie.
Mrs. Stonerook said the people of Hernando also loved her husband, who died Friday morning at Oak Hill Hospital of complications from lung cancer. During his recent hospitalization, the family was flooded with telephone calls, cards and visitors.
"People I've never heard of called," Mrs. Stonerook said. "It's been fantastic, the outpouring of concern for him. The far reach of it amazes me. He knew everybody."
Mr. Stonerook, 72, was famous for his ability to make friends in a job that can sometimes be alienating -- working for nearly 30 years as a news photographer in Hernando County, including 24 years with the St. Petersburg Times.
He ingratiated himself to parents by taking pictures of their children, athletes by shooting action shots at sporting events, and readers all over the county by providing them with pictures from three decades of the county's biggest news stories: the 1978 killing of Lonnie Coburn, a young sheriff's deputy whom Stonerook had befriended; the excavation of bodies from the property of serial killer Billy Mansfield in 1981; the no-name storm that flooded coastal Hernando in 1993.
"Olie has never changed. You saw him in 1973 and you saw him in 2002, and he was always just Olie," said longtime Hernando High School coach Ernie Chatman.
"He always had a positive attitude and enjoyed doing what he was doing and always had something pleasant to say."
He was able to get close to crime scenes partly because law enforcement officers liked and trusted him, Bill Stevens, the Times' North Suncoast editor, wrote in a column when Mr. Stonerook retired in October.
Sometimes he got too close. During one shootout, he was forced to take cover under his car before emerging to shoot pictures for the next day's paper.
Deputies once allowed him to borrow samples from a seized marijuana shipment to take back to the offices of the Brooksville Sun-Journal, where he worked before joining the Times in 1977. He took a picture of the marijuana and returned it the next day.
"Olie was the perfect man for this newspaper as it found its way in Hernando County," Stevens said Friday.
"Readers trusted him. A lot of them knew him personally, and so they knew what a good man he was, and how much he cared about people. I loved the guy, and I was in good company. He was one of a kind."
Mr. Stonerook also bonded with the people of the county because he liked to do what many of them liked to do.
A native of Ohio and an Air Force veteran, Mr. Stonerook married his wife in 1952; they had planned to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next week. He is survived by three children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
In 1960, Mr. Stonerook and his family moved to St. Petersburg, where he worked in a photography lab. Ten years later, the family moved to Hernando.
When he and his son were building their home in Weeki Wachee Woodlands, they would take breaks to swim in lakes that were then full of clear water. He liked to cook up platters of expertly barbecued ribs for friends and family. He liked to fish, mostly because it allowed him to drift on his boat through coastal islands or up the Weeki Wachee River, Mrs. Stonerook said.
He also liked to hang out at restaurants that, like him, were becoming institutions in the rapidly growing county.
"He loved his Coney Island hot dogs," Mrs. Stonerook said, referring to the Coney Island Drive Inn in Brooksville.
"He's been coming in here as long as I can remember," said Donna Marklinsky, a manager at Nellie's Restaurant in Weeki Wachee.
"He was very well known and very well liked," Marklinsky said. "He never had a mean thing to say about anybody. He really was a hell of a nice man."
A memorial service for Olie Stonerook is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Mariner United Methodist Church in Spring Hill. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the W.O.W. children's outreach ministry and the United Methodist Youth Group at Mariner United Methodist, 7079 Mariner Blvd., Spring Hill, FL 34609.