Stephen was born in 1954 to Stephen F. Brezinski and Helen J Brezinski.
He is survived by Roberta, his wife of 40 years, their two children, Seth and Stacia Brezinski, and Stacia’s fiance, Erica, as well as his siblings Thomas Brezinski and his wife Ellen, and sisters Stephanie, Janis, and Theresa. He also wanted to give recognition to a few of his in-laws, Anne and Lenny Kovit and his niece Mia and husband Mark Kheyfetz, who offered such loving support in his last months.
Stephen was raised in Stoneham, Massachusetts. He spoke with a distinct lack of fondness for his experience at Saint Patrick’s Catholic Grammar School, which he credited with turning him into a devout Agnostic. In later years, he took comfort in the Jewish traditions and beliefs of Roberta’s heritage.
Stephen found his stride in college at Virginia Tech, studying geology. He poured three years of hard work into his program, even passing a brutal Crystal Chemistry course. After college, he became an Officer in the NOAA Commissioned Corps, surveying nautical charts off Alaska and Southern California, and then studying the mid-Atlantic Ridge while based in Miami. He was proud of his work in NOAA, but often spoke of the unfortunate toxic masculinity on the ship.
In 1988, he and Roberta moved to Maine, where they built a house in Durham and raised two children. He was a generous and patient father, and modeled principled benevolence for his kids. He regularly donated platelets to the Red Cross for many years and went out of his way to make life easier for others. He was a devoted husband, once proclaiming, “your mother’s home, let’s go dote on her!”
He served the State of Maine for 32 years as an Oil and Hazardous Materials Responder with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. He described this as his dream job, and found it incredibly rewarding to respond to a big discharge and make order out of chaos, fixing the problem and bringing relief to the homeowner. Stephen was known for his thousands of incredibly detailed spill reports, and for saying “I did a spill cleanup there” every five miles or so while driving in the car. Unfortunately, 32 years of low dose exposure to oil and gasoline led to a lung cancer diagnosis several years after retirement. He was very open about his mental and physical struggles during treatment. He said there were so many things he was unprepared for, and he wanted to be transparent with the hope that the information could be useful to others going through cancer treatment.
In his final years, he found joy in returning to his passion for hiking, time with Roberta, and the many talents of Lady Gaga (he would want you to look up her performance of “Abracadabra” on the Howard Stern Show and “Happy Mistake" on Jimmy Kimmel Live).
His family will remember him for his loving nature, clever and dry sense of humor, his values of fairness, generosity, and responsibility to others, and of course, his pies. Stephen asked for donations in his memory to go to the Dempsey Center, a nonprofit cancer support organization which provided comfort and support to Stephen and his family over the past year.