Douglas E. Stone

Douglas Edward Stone, 92, beloved son and father, joined the ancestors peacefully and with love, on March 7th, 2024, from his home in Sylvania, Ohio. Born in 1932 in Detroit, Michigan, from the age of two weeks he grew up on the south side of Chicago, in the city he cherished. Son of Carl E. and Alice E. Stone, he was his own person from the beginning. At age ten, he defied the south-side tradition, and rode the elevated train by himself to watch the Cubs play baseball in the ivy covered walls of Wrigley Field, starting a tradition that would last a lifetime. With a sharp mind and a love of learning, he earned bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees at The University of Chicago on a full scholarship, leaving high-school two years early to the consternation of his teachers who were disappointed at losing their best student. He took a trip one summer with his father to the sunshine state, where he fell in love with warm weather, palm trees, and mowing the grass year-round. He became a professor of statistics in the College of Education at the University of South Florida in Tampa where he lived for over forty years, and touched the lives of countless teachers. He was known as much for his educational passion as he was for his bow ties. He is survived by his only child, Gregory E. Stone, who recalls he could never misbehave in school because Douglas taught the majority of teachers in Hillsborough County and each had his number on speed dial. A car enthusiast, he enjoyed taking long road trips and seeing the highways and byways of the United States, traveling only once out of the country to visit England with his son. An affable jokester, his friends in assisted living knew him as their informal greeter, always donning one of many Cubs baseball caps. To those that knew and loved him, he will be greatly missed.

“He was my north, my south, my east and west; My working week and my Sunday rest; My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was not wrong.” (With a nod to Auden)

Private funeral services will take place at Evergreen Cemetery near Chicago. In lieu of flowers or donations, his family asks that you instead remember how he touched your life, made you think, made you laugh, and made the world just a little better.