Fremont attorney cherished boating

3/30/2001

FREMONT - Thomas C. Stout, a retired Fremont lawyer and a longtime boating enthusiast, died Tuesday in Bethesda Care Center, Fremont. He was 83.

Mr. Stout, who was a resident of the care center for about 11/2 years, died of complications stemming from Parkinson's disease, his son, Timothy, said.

Mr. Stout served as solicitor for the city of Fremont from 1953 to 1959, leaving that post after winning three successive city solicitor races, to become attorney for the Ballville Township trustees, a position he held through the 1960s.

Mr. Stout was a board member of the former Liberty National Bank, Fremont, and its successor, Bank One, for 25 years. He was a member of the Merit Badge Committee for the Boy Scouts in Fremont from 1955 to 1965, and was a longtime member of the Port Clinton Yacht Club, an active Mason, and thoroughly enjoyed hunting and fishing.

He graduated from Fremont Ross High School in 1935, and received a bachelor's degree in 1939 from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he served as president of the Miami University chapter of Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

Mr. Stout served in the U.S. Army as an adjutant in the medical corps in Panama and Kentucky, received his law degree from the former Western Reserve University, Cleveland, in 1947, and joined his father, I.G. Stout, in the family's Fremont law firm in 1948. They worked together more than a dozen years before I.G. Stout retired. Then his son operated the firm, specializing in probate law, until he retired in 1995. I.G. Stout died in 1972.

“My father was a good lawyer. That was very important to him,” his other son, Thomas, said. “He was not what I would call a workaholic, but he loved to help people. The law was a vehicle that allowed him to do that. His family was very important to him. His boats - he had six of them - were vehicles that let him share time with us. As the boats got bigger, there was a need for more maintenance, and a need for bigger crews. That meant us.”

Mr. Stout was a former senior warden and a former Sunday school teacher at St. Paul Episcopal Church, Fremont, and a member of the Fremont VFW post, the American Bar Association, the Fremont Power Squadron, and law officer for District Nine of the Power Squadron, which includes northern Ohio and southern Michigan, Timothy, said.

An unpublished poet, he frequently composed humorous poems for family members on special occasions, such as birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries.

“He was the kind of role model that any child would love to have as a parent,” Thomas said. “He never pushed any of us into studying the law. He let us make our own decisions. None of us became attorneys.”

Surviving are his wife of 57 years, Jane; sons, Thomas and Timothy; daughter, Jane Stout; sister, Kethryn Tingley; nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

The body will be in the Keller-Ochs-Koch Funeral Home, Fremont, after 2 p.m. today. Memorial services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow in St. Paul Episcopal Church.

The family requests tributes to the church or to the Ohio Parkinson Foundation.