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Reporter Packed Lots Of Happiness Into Short Life

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By JASON GEARY and JEFF SCULLIN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 18, 2008

Updated: 02/17/2008 11:23 pm

Mary Ellen Murphy spent eight years chronicling everyday life in Tampa and Brandon - from the opening of the Brandon mall in the 1990s to a Hillsborough Community College program that encouraged employees to buy carnations for one another.

But it was with her laugh, her smile, her sense of humor and her vitality that the former Tampa Tribune reporter, who became Mary Ellen Stidham after marrying 16 years ago, left her mark.

"She was a ball of energy," said husband Jeff Stidham, a Tribune editorial writer. "People counted on her, and she was a dependable friend."

Stidham, 49, died Sunday about 4:30 a.m. at Memorial Hospital of Tampa from pulmonary fibrosis.

Though she had battled respiratory problems since she was a teenager, Stidham's sudden decline came as a surprise. She worked the day before she went into the hospital last month, her husband said.

"Nobody ever would have known she was sick," he said.

Mary Ellen Stidham had worked as an information specialist at the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research in Bartow since 1995. Before that, she had worked as a reporter for the Tribune since 1987, covering education, business, development and other topics.

In the 1980s, Stidham traveled to places such as Peru and the Middle East while writing for The Catholic Free Press, where her father was the editor, her husband said.

A native of Worcester, Mass., she was a New England girl at heart who never thought of moving to the South but embraced Bartow as her home.

She was a board member of the Polk Arts Alliance and the Greater Bartow Chamber of Commerce and a former board member of the Bartow Memorial Hospital Foundation. She also taught CCD classes at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Bartow.

The family enjoyed traveling to Europe and was planning a summer trip to Ireland.

"She enjoyed life, and she knew her life was not going to be long," said Lindsay Peterson, a Tribune reporter who worked with Stidham.

"Whatever she had, she wanted to enjoy it, and she wanted other people to enjoy it, too."

When Stidham's health took a turn for the worse, Trish Pfeiffer, a family friend, set up a Web site to provide updates on her health.

"I didn't want people to bombard the family because they just had enough on their hands," Pfeiffer said.

The Web site sometimes got a couple of hundred hits a day and had more than 6,200 as of Sunday - some from people Stidham hadn't heard from in 20 years, Pfeiffer said.

"Everybody liked her. She was truly that kind of person," Peterson said.

"People really remember her."

In addition to her husband, Stidham is survived by her daughter, Murphy.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Reporter Jason Geary can be reached at (813) 779-4613 or jgeary@tampatrib.com. Editor Jeff Scullin can be reached at (813) 779-4614 or jscullin@ tampatrib.com.

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