Beech Tree News Network

Antoinette Toni “Ms. Toni” Brown Stahl became ill early Easter morning, her 105th Birthday, and passed away at the Hospice House in Bowling Green, the afternoon of April 3, 2024.  

She grew up in Pensacola, FL, and endured hard times during the Depression with her widowed Mom and her five siblings. The second oldest child, by 15, she was working to support the family. By 17 she was married. She lost her first child when she was 19. In 1941, she was a Navy wife living beside the Pearl Harbor Naval Base with her daughter Sandra, not yet two, and witnessed the bombing and the start of WWII. She and Sandra were evacuated back to the States, and her first marriage did not endure the times. In the last months of the War, she was a single Mom working in the Civil Service in Manhattan Beach, when she met an Army pilot from Bowling Green, KY.  They were married in three weeks, and this marriage provided her a new family, including two children, Judy and Mike Stahl. After the war, her new husband, Charles R. Stahl segued from the military into the early, post war days of the Airlines. This began a comfortable, but challenging migratory lifestyle as they transferred, sometimes yearly, across the country from Miami to the Bay Area of California. Their son Andy was born in San Antonio, Tx, in 1952. In 1961, the decision was made to leave the airlines and move from the suburbs of Oakland to a farm in Butler County for Charles to take over his aging parent’s farming operation. Her daughter, Sandra was married by then, and remained in California while the rest of the family took on a mind-boggling culture shock in rural Kentucky surroundings only familiar to husband Charles. In addition to the farms, they started an insulation company which they maintained until Charles death in 1988. Toni was 69 at the time. 

Basically, from the time she was 15 until she was 97, Toni worked. She learned bookkeeping and worked in banks. Locally she was employed Cutler Hammer, WKU, the BG Police Department, and perhaps her most fulfilling job, running the front desk part-time at the Medical Center.  She did that until she was 97, getting off at 8pm three nights a week, and driving home 20 miles. Through all her life, she endured challenges, and maintained. From barely surviving a snake bite as child, to being the second person recorded in Kentucky history (according to AM radio) to sustain a bite from a rabid bat. More challenging, was surviving breast cancer in the 70’s. She loved people, and loved staying active, being part of numerous civic organizations from a Cub Scout Den Mother, to a founding member of the Tank Town Twirlers.

Writing this as her son, I’m inclined to share too many details because I think her life is one more example of what we are all capable of, and, “what it takes!”  I’m inclined to thank everyone that ever knew her, because over the last three decades especially, I have witnessed such an inspiring interaction between people who loved and admired her, and how they in turn, inspired her to live life with enthusiasm and self-worth. It was a beautiful dance, and so touching to see people benefit from each other.

Preceding her in death is her husband, Charles, her stepson Mike, her siblings, and more than can be listed here. Surviving is her daughter Sandra Laughlin, stepdaughter Judy Carr, (John) son Andy, grandchildren Tamara Ledwith, (Ryan) Will Laughlin, (Beth) Scott Laughlin, (Ingrid) Debra Halbig (Dwyane) Kelli Haynes, (Mark) Reuben Stahl.

Please consider a donation to the Med Center Health-Commonwealth Health Foundation (The Medical Center) in Toni’s memory, or perhaps in celebration of the life Toni lived, make a donation to the cause dearest to you, in recognition of your love for her and the life she lived.  

Celebration of life will be conducted at a later date. Arrangements have been entrusted to J. C. Kirby and Son Lovers Lane Chapel.