Stephen C. Mahan Jr.

"The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books."
- Henry Miller

GENEVA – Stephen C. Mahan Jr., of Geneva, passed away on Sunday, April 30, 2023 at Geneva General Hospital.

Friends may call at the DeVaney-Bennett Funeral Home, 181 N. Main St., Geneva N.Y. on Friday, (May 5) from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. A Mass of remembrance will be at 12 noon on Saturday, (May 6) at St. Stephen's Church. Burial will follow in Sandhill Cemetery.

Memorial contributions, in his memory, may be made to Our Lady of Peace Parish, 130 Exchange St., Geneva, N.Y.

His third grade desk sat to a very large window on the first floor of St. Stephen's Elementary School. Earlier in the day young Stephen, or Stevie, had his knuckles whacked with a ruler for speaking out of turn. Back at his desk after lunch recess, he proved unable to resist yet another wisecrack. As the nun, ruler in hand, made her way down the aisle to bruise little Stevie's other set of knuckles, he decided that wasn't going to happen again. Standing on his desk chair, he stretched to open window sill, and like a superhero, jumped out the window onto the paved parking lot and hightailed-it out of sight. The following day his mother enrolled him in High St. Elementary School.

To call his spirit indomitable is like calling the ocean deep or the sky wide. There are some hearts that cannot be contained, controlled, or otherwise coerced by petty expectations or foolish fears. Exuberant, some might say explosive, of enthusiasm and emotion, his oyster was so large he chewed on it for ninety-four years, and when his teeth started to call-it-quits, he filled his belly with bowtie soup.

He lost his father when he was six years old; his mother when he was seventeen, and made his way with intelligence, charm, chutzpah, and curiosity. A box lacrosse standout when wooden sticks were the weapon of choice, he shook-off a blow across the bridge of the nose that bled so badly a women in the bleachers fainted. (It was the only game he forgot to wear the Scapular of Our Lady his mother had given him.) He met a bathing beauty, Rosemarie "Riley" Scranton, on the beach in Old Forge and wooed her with his killer smile and ukulele. After a year on Cape Cod and a year in Sausalito, California with the US Army – he liked to say he kept both shores secure – he wed his one and only. They raised three boys and two girls.

He had never worked in retail, had no idea how to run a cash register, but as a young husband and father, he left a promising career with the New York Telephone Co. and purchased a fledgling business in downtown Geneva – Harman's Sport Shop – and every year for seventeen years he took it up a notch in presentation and sales. And when he'd had enough, he moved on.

Picking-up whitewater kayaking in his late fifties, he kayaked and canoed over seventy rivers in North America. In his sixties, he kayaked the Colorado River through the heart of the Grand Canyon, including Crystal and Lava Falls, two rapids to raise the spinal hairs of Neptune. Should you ever visit the Grand Canyon, be still and listen closely, you can hear the gods echoing his name through the immensity and the grandeur.

Stephen is survived by two sons, Michael and Joseph, and two daughters, Jean Marie (Steven) Shutter and Mary Pat (Paul) Longstreet; five grandchildren, Michael, Eric and Jack Shutter; Riley and Sadie Mahan; two daughters-in-law, Deborah Thorna and Mary Lynn Mahan.

He was predeceased by his parents, his wife Rosemarie ""Riley"" and his son Stephen III.


For those wishing to write a note of condolence to the family, please visit www.devaneybennettfh.com.