Thomas Gray Stokes, Sr. of Gainesville Georgia, and formerly of Avondale Estates Georgia, died peacefully Thursday November 14, at The Fountainview Center for Alzheimer’s Disease in Atlanta. He was lovingly surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and companion Marge Farashian. His remains will be cremated, then inurned in the family plot at The Decatur Cemetery, during a private family service. Friends and family are invited to a Celebration of Tom’s rich and beautiful life, which will be held Saturday November 16, at 2:00 PM in the “Historic” Chapel of Decatur First United Methodist Church, located at 318 Sycamore Street, Decatur GA 30030. Guests are also invited to continue the celebration immediately following in the reception room of the Church. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Association and/or The Leukemia-Lymphoma Society.
Thomas G. Stokes, Sr. was born in Atlanta Georgia, May 29, 1938. He graduated Decatur High School as a member of the class of 1956 and soon married Glenda Loftis, formerly of Frederick Oklahoma. Glenda preceded him in death in 2006, suffering with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Tom and Glenda enjoyed a long and wonderful marriage of forty-eight years.
Tom is best known for being a loving husband and father, a sharp real estate investor, and kind businessperson. His father Davis Lee “DL” Stokes, and mother Florence Nightingale Dreyer Stokes, created a family legacy known as D. L. Stokes & Company, later S&L Mortgage and Investments, Inc., and currently EpiCity Real Estate Services. Tom Sr. with Glenda, and with his late sister Mona and husband Ted LaVallee, continued DL’s dream and vision throughout Atlanta, as embodied in the numerous “Epic” real estate properties.
Losing his dad when he was just fifteen years old, and also his older brother Jim, whom he idolized, six years later, kept family of paramount importance for Tom. With his wife Glenda they raised three children; Tom, Jr., Allison and Stanley. He never ceased to provide great memories for his children and grandchildren, including never missing a baseball, football, softball, soccer match, or waterskiing tournament. Tom also umpired hundreds of little league baseball games at Murphy Candler Park and coached all three of his children in one organized sport or another. Not surprisingly, Tom was offered a grand promotion when his children were in their teens that would require moving his family to Chicago Illinois. Putting his family first, Tom thought the move would be too disruptive to his teenage children and so chose to decline the offer and stay in Atlanta.
In the 1970’s and 80’s the family spent nearly every weekend at their cabin on Lake Lanier. Tom’s sister Mona and her husband Ted would often visit in their houseboat with their four children Lynne, Jim, Lisa and Anne. Together the families would often celebrate with large family gatherings. Thanksgiving in the family’s early years included the UGA vs GA Tech freshman football game, and later the running of the Atlanta Marathon. Tom, ever the hyperactive Atlanta Track Club volunteer, would organize fifty plus helpers to set out thousands of traffic cones over the 26 mile course on Turkey Day each year, which earned him the nickname “The Cone Man”. As a teenager Tom, Sr. became a national champion U-control model airplane pilot, using a Bell P-39 “Airacobra” that he built with his childhood friend Walton Pyron. He could build just about anything! He was a skilled carpenter and also enjoyed rebuilding and refinishing antique automobiles with his longtime friend Buster Rollins. Ever the raconteur, Tom could (and often did) talk for hours with his first-grade classmate Peyton Lingle. And he logged thousands of miles jogging with his pal Jerry “ole Pounds” Pounds.
Tom and Glenda loved Bike New York and also participated annually with a dozen friends and family in the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia “BRAG”. Proud of his own physical conditioning and participation in a dozen marathons around the country, he loved to remind anyone who would listen that he was an “ATH-A-LETE”. An accomplished water and snow skier, Tom also participated in hundreds of other foot races from Maggie Valley, NC, to Panama City, FL , including over forty Peachtree Road Races. In fact, for many of those “Peachtrees”, Tom engaged a full-sized commercial passenger bus to take his friends to the start line at Lenox Square. After the race the bus would retrieve the group from Piedmont Park and return them to his home in Dunwoody where all would celebrate their participation in the race and the nation’s Independence Day around the pool.
Tom was active in the field of real estate since 1959. His experience includes land development, lending, mortgage banking and servicing, real estate sales, income property investment, and appraisal. He graduated from the Atlanta Law School in 1962 and was involved in a great number of real estate organizations including the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers, Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors, and the Georgia Association of Realtors, to name a few. By far, his favorite part of the work he did was appraising, traveling throughout the country doing so, often with his beloved wife Glenda. He became a Member of the Appraisal Institute (MAI) in 1986 and served in leadership roles for the Atlanta chapter. Tom was a nationally recognized within the organization and a respected member of the institute’s national faculty and ethics committee for many, many years. To this day he is well known and remembered in the Atlanta commercial real estate community.
Tom is survived by his children: son Tom, Jr. and his wife Helena of Chamblee, GA, their children Thomas III and Emma Grace; daughter Allison and her husband Mike Sapp, Sr. of Lutz, FL, their children Mike Sapp, Jr., April and her husband Mike Lewis; son Stan and his wife Patty of Suwanee, GA, their children Sam and his wife Juli, Chris and his wife Kori, their children Kristian, Judah and Joel, Sarah, Hannah.
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Alzheimer’s Association
The Leukemia-Lymphoma Society
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