Terry Lee Thompson passed away on January 24, 2017 at Bristol Court Assisted Living Facility in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

Terry was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 22, 1947, the second child of Ralph Russell Thompson and Hildred Juanita (Stout) Thompson. In late 1950 his parents moved with him and his brother, Thomas Ralph Thompson (two and a half years Terry’s senior), to Saint Petersburg, Florida. Tragically, Ralph died of lung cancer just a few years later, leaving Hildred to raise the boys by herself. Terry found many aspects of growing up challenging. In general, he did not have an easy time in school, though he did discover in a woodworking class that he had a particular aptitude for expressing himself with his hands. He was a motorcycle and gun enthusiast who was not overly fond of minding authority. This and his cavalier ways with women got him into various sorts of trouble in his teens and early twenties.

Turning away from these troubles, Terry took a cross-country trip in the early 70s, eventually ending up in California where he met Shirley June Geiger. The two moved back to Saint Petersburg together and got married in St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Church on November 9, 1972. Having found some stability in his life, Terry indulged in his love of carpentry, making and selling tables, bowls, wall clocks, and shelves, and became known among his friends as Thompson the Woodsman. Terry and Shirley would end their marriage five years later. In the late 70s Terry found work on a boat bound for Central America, just as his father had done some fifty year before. Terry eventually made his way to Costa Rica, where he fell in love, learned Spanish, and started a lumber exporting business. In the mid-80s, Terry moved back to the States, living for a while in Asheville, North Carolina, and then Charleston, South Carolina. He found a great deal of work in the latter helping to rebuild after Hurricane Hugo hit in 1989.

In the early 1990s Terry moved back to Saint Petersburg. His mother Hildred was now in her 80s and needed help. Terry worked on a variety of contracting jobs while making, with funding help from his brother Thom, many needed repairs on his mother’s house. He also found time to convert a bread-truck into a camper that he would use to take friends to Ft. Desoto. After Hildred’s death in 1996, Terry and Thom sold the family house, and Terry entered a period of wandering, taking odd jobs in construction, living in many different places in and around St. Pete, and making trips back to Costa Rica whenever he could. Sometime in the late aughts Terry suffered a severe back injury. By the mid-teens complications from medications and a lifetime of smoking required Terry to enter assisted living.

Terry Lee Thompson was preceded in death by his parents. He is survived by his son Paul Michael Carelli, his daughter Amey Melissa Payne, his grandson Jackson Joshua Randall, his brother Thomas Ralph Thompson, and by many friends who remember his kindness and his love of freedom.

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