Ralph Stevens split his time amongst all manner of city organizations. He died Jan. 5.
By MARY JANE PARK
Published January 11, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Ralph Stevens' breadth of knowledge was so vast that in the days before most Americans had access to personal computers, his friends consulted him as a search engine.
If you needed to know the answer to a question, Mr. Stevens was your man.
That was one of the recollections of which his eulogists spoke Thursday at his memorial, held in First Presbyterian Church. Several hundred people attended the service, many of them community leaders in the city Mr. Stevens called home.
Mr. Stevens was president of Stevens & Stevens Inc., a business records company in Pinellas Park.
His father, a physician, died when Mr. Stevens was a young boy. His mother moved the family from Chattahoochee to St. Petersburg, where she supported Mr. Stevens and his sister, Dorothy, by managing a small hotel on Fourth Street S.
Mr. Stevens, who died Jan. 5, was a graduate of St. Petersburg High School and the University of Florida. He was a KC-97 navigator in the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War.
For years, Mr. Stevens was a trustee and officer of All Children's Hospital and was president of All Children's Health Systems.
As president of the Sertoma Club, he headed a project to establish a speech and hearing clinic. As All Children's Hospital evolved, the clinic became a part of it.
Speaker after speaker Thursday mentioned Mr. Stevens' integrity. He was a man on whom people depended, perpetually prepared.
He was board chairman of First Community Bank of America and a director of Bank of Florida and SouthTrust Bank of West Florida. Renovation of the Feather Sound Country Club took place during his presidency of the Dragon Club, and he was active in the Polywogs, the group that sponsored golf tournaments in St. Petersburg for the LPGA.
Mr. Stevens was a fervent fan of the UF Gators. Flowers in orange and blue, the school colors, lay atop his coffin and were in tribute arrangements throughout the nave of the church.
The orange fedora he called his "bowling hat," dense with game ticket stubs and souvenir pins, was there, too.
Mr. Stevens and his wife, Carol Sue, attended numerous football bowl games in which the Gators played. An imposing physical presence, Mr. Stevens wore the hat to out-of-town games. Joe and Joanne Fleece often traveled with the couple.
"Ralph was bigger than life," lawyer Joe Fleece said of his friend on Friday. The hat and its wearer commanded attention.
"We met more Gator fans when we traveled than anything," Fleece said.
