For his last Christmas, Tommy Stevenson came up with a memorial that reflected his whimsical sense of humor and knack for meeting mechanical challenges.

He trimmed a 60-year-old Ford tractor with paint, lights and tinsel and displayed it proudly in the yard of his Shille­lagh Farms home.

“I bought him a book on old tractors after he retired,” said Linda Stevenson, Tommy’s wife of 43 years. “Fixing them up became

his hobby.”

Tommy Stevenson, who died Jan. 14 at 65, worked 30 years for Bell Atlantic, now Verizon. He shared his talent for rebuilding tractors with his older brother, Clyde.

“Those tractors, they were essentially junk,” Clyde Stevenson said. “The first one was a 1942 John Deere. It had been sitting in weeds for 10 to 14 years. It was a hunk of rust.”
One tractor dated to 1937. Often it took years to get them into any kind of shape. The pair found used and after-market parts through catalogs and other sources.

Did they ever sell any of these machines? “Oh, no,” Clyde Stevenson said. “Well, we did sell a ’49 Farmall to a man from Arkansas.”

The yuletide machine was a Ford 8N from the 1940s, once owned by a neighbor. When Tommy’s health began to fail, the brothers had three tractors up and running and three short of completion.

“They look brand-new,” Clyde said of the three finished products, which he keeps and tinkers with on his property.

Tommy Stevenson liked to sketch pictures of machinery as well as work with it. “He did a lot of drawings of airplanes, tractors and autos,” his wife said.

He also discovered a musical talent in his golden years. Using books and videos, he taught himself guitar and often co-starred with grandson Hunter during family occasions. T he two offered renditions of “Home on the Range,” “Amazing Grace” and other traditional favorites.

Four years ago, he designed and made a replica of a British Spitfire fighter plane that his grandson pedaled up and down the driveway with the propeller spinning. He and his wife were also especially close to their “special niece,” Amy Sangeorge.

“He was a great guy and a good family man,” Linda Stevenson said of her husband. “He was just a homebody.”