MIDDLEBURY — Stephen C. Terry of Middlebury, a lifelong, iconic Vermonter, died on July 19, 2025, in his 1799 home, surrounded by his beloved family and his library and memorabilia from the many Vermont organizations that he helped lead over the years. A longtime reporter, editor and executive at Green Mountain Power, Stephen was a valued political adviser to many Vermont politicians.

In 2014 he was named Vermont Citizen of the Year by the Vermont State Chamber of Commerce.

He was 82 when he died of cancer.

During his lifetime, Stephen loved and was loved by three exceptional women and their children: his first wife, Sandra Wells, and their children, Megan and Joshua; his second wife, the late Sally West Johnson, and their son, Will; and, last, his wife, Faith Terry, who was by his side during his later years.

Stephen came from rural, blue-collar roots. Born in Windsor, Vt., on October 2, 1942, to Charles and Patricia Terry, he was the eldest of his four siblings, John, Ellen, Tom and Margaret. Growing up, Stephen worked on his uncle’s dairy farm in Plainfield, Vt., where he learned to milk cows by hand.

In high school he played on the football team while also reporting on sports for a local weekly, The Vermont Journal, an experience that sparked his lifelong interest in journalism. As a philosophy student at the University of Vermont, Stephen invented a reporting job for himself; he interviewed students of interest and then drafted articles about them which UVM distributed to the students’ hometown newspaper.

It was also at UVM that he dated his first wife, Sandy, who became a longtime reading teacher for elementary school students. Upon graduation in 1964, they were married, and Stephen interned with The Providence Journal in Rhode Island.

Returning to Vermont, he was hired by The Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus for their Vermont Press Bureau, where he covered the legislature and state politics. He wrote about the 1965 reapportionment of the Vermont legislature, the influx of many new residents into the state during the 1960s, and, later, the presidential election of 1968

He also covered the tenure of Governor Phil Hoff, widely credited with initiating changes that set the state on a more liberal path. “Phil Hoff forever changed the State of Vermont,” Stephen told the New York Times in 2018. “His influence in the 1960s has molded and created the Vermont many of us know today.” In their 2011 book Phil Hoff: How Red Turned Blue in the Green Mountain State, Stephen and his co-authors, Samuel Hand and Anthony Marro, describe the significant political changes put in motion under the Hoff administration.

In addition to the political upheaval, 1968 saw significant personal changes for Stephen. He and Sandy’s daughter and first child, Megan, was born in April. A year later, Stephen took a detour from journalism into politics when Senator George D. Aiken (R-VT) recruited him to work for six years as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate. While living in Washington, their family continued to grow with their second child, Joshua, in September of 1972.

Stephen became the lead staffer for both the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Agriculture committees. Senator Aiken quickly came to rely on him to read the pulse of politics and media coverage back home in Vermont. He was in Washington during a time of political and social upheaval, marked by the Vietnam War, the ongoing Civil Rights movement and the Watergate scandal. Years later, he authored the book Say We Won and Get Out, which details how Aiken, one of the most senior Republican U.S. Senators at the time, became a leading critic of the Vietnam War.

After returning home from D.C., he and Sandy moved onto a 100-acre farm they had purchased in Plainfield. Stephen opened the Burlington Bureau of The Rutland Herald and Times-Argus newspapers and then became the founding editor of their newly created Sunday Edition. In 1977 he was named the Managing Editor of The Rutland Herald, which he ran until 1985. The Rutland Herald thrived during that period and went on to be recognized as one of the best small-city dailies in the country.

The reporting he oversaw included extensive coverage of the state legislature, shifting politics driven by younger people moving in from out of state, and the growing environmental movement. As managing editor, he worked to keep the newspaper publishing throughout its nearly year-long labor strike beginning in 1980.

Upon Stephen’s departure from the paper, Robert Mitchell, the publisher, penned as editorial lauding his management. “Under his leadership, the Herald expanded its news coverage of the state in concert with its sister paper, the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus,” Mitchell wrote. “The Herald became the newspaper that state officials, politicians and civic leaders turned to for information about state affairs.”

In 1980, he met Sally W. Johnson, a promising young journalist, who went on to become a longtime reporter and editor herself. They moved in together in Middlebury, has their son, Will, and eventually got married in the Chapel at Middlebury College. Living together Stephen and Sally always shared stories about journalism and politics over dinner.

Many years later, in 2010, after their 30-year relationship together, Sally passed away from liver disease. Before her death, she wrote a story for the Boston Sunday Globe detailing her experience with the illness, its emergence as a societal health concern, and ongoing advancement in treatment.

Back in 1985, Steve taught a course on the media at Middlebury College. He then joined the leadership of Green Mountain Power, managing government relations and external affairs. During his time at GMP, he facilitated the importation of hydroelectric power from Quebec, managed the response of the Great Ice Storm of 1998, championed the state’s very first commercial wind farm in Lowell, and successfully advanced GMP’s acquisition of Central Vermont Public Service in 2012.

“I learned early on that Steve is motivated by spearheading actions that benefit Vermont,” said Dotty Schnure, his longtime colleague and from GMP. “For example, one of the first things he did at GMP was convince management that increasing the water flow through the dams in the Winooski River would be the right thing to do. It meant less electric generation, but he helped them understand that a healthy river meant a healthy Vermont.

After leaving GMP, Stephen continued to work as a consultant for energy projects and for a manufacturer of dairy products.

During all these years, Stephen was actively engaged in community leadership. He served on many statewide boards, including the Vermont Community Foundation, the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors, the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, UVM’s Center for Research on Vermont, the Snelling Center for Government, the Vermont Press Association, the Vermont Historical Society, the Vermont Journalism Trust, the Vermont Food Bank, and the Aiken Lecture Series.

He served on the selection committee of the Vermont Writer’s Prize, which he created in 1989 and is sponsored by GMP and Vermont Magazine. He also became active locally, joining the Middlebury Planning Commission and becoming Chair of the Board of Trustees for Porter Hospital and Porter Medical Center, leading negotiations as they joined the UVM Health Network.

Following his wife Sally’s passing Stephen continued his community service.

Through his civic engagement, years earlier, he had first met Terry Faith Weihs. Faith, a champion of the arts and the creative economy, and her late husband, Gerald, an attorney, lived in downtown Vergennes and were proactive in guiding the town’s revitalization.

Stephen and Faith reconnected and entered upon a loving relationship that continued until his passing. He proposed to her on a petrified bluff overlooking the Tasman Sea in New Zealand. Just prior to their wedding, Faith bought Stephen a Belted Galloway cow, a heritage Scottish breed that eventually turned into a small, beloved herd of cows that he would visit each morning to check their water and to feed them.

Together they transformed their home and verdant gardens into a tranquil, welcoming and creative sanctuary. The past fifteen years held rich and meaningful life experiences and were considered an unanticipated gift.

When he was nominated Vermont Citizen of the Year, friends and colleagues sent in innumerable letters of recommendation. The Pulitzer Prize-winning editor from The Rutland Herald, David Moats, wrote the following: “It was Steve’s great quality as a citizen of Vermont that, no matter whom he was representing, the good of the state was always the backdrop of our conversations.”

“Steve has served as an able staffer, editor, chronicler and advisor to Vermont Governors for nearly 50 years,” wrote former Governor Howard Dean. “His knowledge of Vermont is extraordinary, as is his dedication to the people of the state of Vermont.”

In retirement, in addition to looking after his cows, Stephen wrote extensively about Vermont history and politics. When election days would approach, he could be found on WCAX, speaking as a Democratic political analyst alongside his Republican counterpart, Mike Smith.

In his final year, Stephen never lost his love of reading and remained a voracious consumer of local and national news. As his days grew shorter, he turned to audiobooks. Just as curious as when he first began as a reporter in high school. always wanting to learn more, he would listen round the clock, throughout the day, and late into the evenings as he drifted to sleep.

Stephen will be greatly missed by his family, his friends, his many colleagues from Vermont journalism, business and politics, and by the countless community members who volunteered alongside him on those many community boards over the years.

Stephen’s love for his home state was evident and foremost in nearly everything he did. His energy, time and focus proved effective. He leaves Vermont a better place, the result of his political savvy and intuition, his hard work ethic, and his devotion to the place where he was born and built a fulfilling and meaningful life.

Stephen will be buried in the West Cemetery in Middlebury. Contributions in his memory may be made in support of journalism and a free and independent press to the Addison County Independent weekly newspaper at www.addisonindependent.com and/or to the Vermont Journalism Trust, a nonprofit organization which he helped create. It supports the digital news publication VTDigger.◊