Terry Lee Coffee

Terry Lee Coffee of Princess Anne, MD died Sunday, May 28th at the age of 60, from a long battle with leukemia. Born in Salisbury on February 4th, 1957 he was adopted at birth by the late Carl S. Coffee and Fannie Mae Willin-Coffee. Besides a previously adopted child who was tragically killed in an automobile accident they had no other children. Terry was preceded in death by the love of his life, Katharine Bernardine Coffee. Married in 2000 they were inseparable until her death in 2010, also from cancer. They had no children. He was a 1978 graduate of Wicomico Senior High School and attended Delaware Technical Community College after graduation. Terry became interested in electronics and computers at an early age and quickly learned about programming computers just at the time when personal computers first started to appear on the market. From the mid 1980’s he had worked on everything from office machines to the installation of phone and security systems for Wilkins Electronics. He also wrote a number of computer programs and gave free computer consultation to a number of computer bulletin board services. His electronic newsletter became number one on many of them. In the late 80’s Terry started a computer repair business called TLC Computer Repair. Although he tried to grow his business over the next several years personal circumstances and the death of his mother resulted in the loss of that company around 1994. Terry taught a number of Continuing Education Courses for WOR- WIC Community College from 1990 - 1995. He taught DOS and Lotus courses as well as computer troubleshooting and repair and the college’s early popular Windows courses. He also created a custom course on programming for the Simposer™ POS system. His students would comment on his knowledge of the subjects and being able to keep the technical material light and easy to understand. During that same time period Terry designed many of the electronic effects and props for the Salisbury Junior Chamber Of Commerce Haunted House, constructing much of the equipment from memory. He also volunteered at the Excel Museum of Science. He had many hobbies, interests and job skills such as restoring computers and pinball machines, computer programming in a number of programming languages, model building, training cockatiels and performing magic shows where he appeared as Tabor the Magician. Spoken languages were also a hobby and he became diverse in many before his cancer treatments. He remained very familiar with Korean and surprised many with his knowledge of the language. Terry wished to be cremated and to forego an official funeral service however a celebration of Terry’s life is being planned for Wednesday, June 21, 2017 at 7pm at Bounds Funeral Home on East Main Street in Salisbury. Rev. Fritz Danielus will officiate. In lieu of flowers donations in Terry’s name can be made to Wicomico County Free Public Library, 122 S. Division Street, Salisbury, Md. 21801. 410-749-3612.