Oliver Wendell Stephenson

Wendell Stephenson, founder and CEO of southern California-based Stephenson Financial Services Inc. (SFS), died of natural causes on the morning of May 31 at The Meadows in Nashville, TN, at the age of 88. He is survived by his four children, Pam King, Franklin, TN; Patresa Miller, Sedona, AZ; Paula (and Dennis) Davidson, Santa Clarita, CA; Wen (and Fiona) Stephenson, Wayland, MA; as well as seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Mr. Stephenson, who received a master’s degree in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin, started SFS in 1970 in Los Angeles, where he had moved from Dallas, Texas in 1966 to become controller of the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant chain. A forward-looking startup, SFS would provide accounting services to restaurants, specializing in chain operations, using state-of-the-art computing technology. During three decades in business, SFS developed its own suite of accounting software products and services for food-service chains, including many national and regional brands such as Au Bon Pain, Bruegger’s Bagels, Legal Sea Food, the American Restaurant Group, and iconic southern California clients such as Hungry Tiger, See’s Candies, El Torito, Sportsman’s Lodge, and The Grill in Beverly Hills. Stephenson, whose expertise was widely recognized within the food-service industry, was admired as a consummate salesman and communicator, with an engaging, larger-than-life personality and Texas farm-boy humor.

Oliver Wendell Stephenson was born in the small town of Blossom, Texas, near Paris, on July 11, 1932, the fifth of six children, and was the last surviving member of his immediate family. His parents, Henry Albert Stephenson and Lena Josephine (Pritchett) Stephenson, were small farmers, day laborers, and sharecroppers during the Great Depression. His father, a carpenter, was often away on construction jobs or looking for work around the state in lean years. His mother raised six children largely on her own, selling insurance to farmers to help support the family. His mother’s family came to Texas from Kentucky at the turn of the 20th century. His father’s family, originally from central Europe, immigrated to Texas in 1881, changing their name from Steffensky to Stephenson, and worked on construction and maintenance of railroads.

Despite early hardship as a son of sharecroppers, Stephenson held onto warm memories of his childhood on the family farm near Blossom—and the one-room schoolhouse he attended—and of living in nearby Detroit, Texas, where he graduated from high school in 1949. These were memories he often shared with his children and grandchildren and wrote about eloquently in later years in an unpublished autobiography.

Wendell Stephenson was the first in his family’s history to attain a college degree. He graduated from Abilene Christian College in 1953, then served in the U.S. Army and went on to graduate school at the University of Texas on the GI Bill. It was at Abilene that he met his fellow student Patsy Jo Ferguson (https://wenstephenson.com/in-memoriam/), who became his wife and the mother of his children. Wendell lost Patsy Jo, the love of his life, in June 2020. Their lives together encompassed 70 years, having lived in Abilene, Austin, Killeen, and Richardson, Texas; La Cañada Flintridge, San Clemente, and Santa Clarita, California; Horseshoe Bay, Texas; and Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee. Both were devout Christians and members of the Churches of Christ wherever they lived.

Wendell’s children remember him as a driven and accomplished businessman, a generous and devoted father, and a doting grandfather to their own children.