Thomas Leo Stapleton

1934 - 2023

STAPLETON

THOMAS LEO STAPLETON

Thomas Leo Stapleton passed away peacefully on April 24, 2023 at his home in Washington, DC. He was 88.



Tom was born in Brooklyn, NY on June 25, 1934, the son of Patrick Stapleton and Josephine (Hogan) Stapleton, Irish immigrants who arrived in New York in the 1920s. He grew up playing stickball in the streets, listening to The Shadow and tending a wartime victory garden at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. The family would gather for the fireside chats of President Franklin D. Roosevelt through the Depression and World War II.



Devoted to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Tom could be found at Ebbets Field whenever he could sneak into a game or afford a bleacher seat. Jackie Robinson remained his hero to the end.



Tom graduated from Brooklyn Tech high school, Brooklyn College, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His first stop after law school was the U.S. Army. He made many of his closest lifelong friends during basic training at Ft. Benning, GA, and at Judge Advocate General school in Charlottesville, VA. Tom was an Army lawyer for several years. But his dream was to work for the U.S. Department of Justice, and in the mid-1960s he was hired.



From his home in Arlington, Virginia, where he lived with his wife and daughter, Tom took the bus downtown every day to his job in the department's Tax Division, where he was an appellate lawyer. In the heat of a DC summer, he would head to the bus stop wearing his signature seersucker suit.



After some years, his skills in the niche area of the taxation of life insurance companies, in which he had won some seminal cases, led to his recruitment by MetLife. He created and managed the company's tax department, becoming Tax Director and Senior Vice President. Tom helped draft federal and state tax legislation in the 1980s, and also headed the tax committees of numerous life insurance industry groups, at least two of which suspended their term limits so he could remain as leader. He was a frequent speaker on insurance taxation at conferences, and testified about the issue before Congress.



Tom became of counsel with the Washington law firm Davis & Harman after retiring from MetLife. He and his wife moved to Middleburg, Virginia, in 1997, and he lived there until he moved to Washington, DC in 2021.



Tom was admired for his honesty and integrity. He was a gentleman and he was kind -- and funny. He watched over and took care of those he loved. And he remained a staunch baseball fan till the day he died (he'd transferred his allegiance to the N.Y. Yankees decades earlier).



He is survived by his daughter, Viveca Novak; his son-in-law, Robert Lenhard; and two grandchildren, Nora Lenhard and Thomas Lenhard. His wife, Dagmar Stapleton, passed away in 2016. He was also predeceased by his sister, Geraldine Stapleton.



A service and interment will be at Oak Hill Cemetery, 3001 R St. NW, Washington, DC, on May 7 at 11 a.m. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, friends consider contributing to Defenders of Wildlife in Washington, DC or Friends of Homeless Animals in Aldie, VA.