Born Nov. 11, 1953
Springfield, Vermont
Died Feb. 19, 2025
Windsor, Vermont
Details of services
A celebration of Jay’s life will occur in August, the date still to be announced. It will be on his land in Weathersfield Bow, with the spirit of festive energy, as he would have wanted.
Knight Funeral Home has been entrusted with arrangements. Condolences may be expressed in an online guestbook found at www.knightfuneralhomes.com.
Jay Karl Stevens, 71, died unexpectedly from cardiac arrest on February 19, 2025.
Jay was born November 11, 1953 in Springfield, VT to Karl and Patricia (Warren) Stevens. Born into a long line of Vermont farmers, Jay attended school in Springfield and graduated from KUA before attending the University of Vermont.
While at UVM he met the love of his life, Sara DeGennaro. The couple traveled the world together, and lived in the fun and danger of LA and NYC during the gritty seventies, marrying in 1980. In the mid-eighties they returned to Vermont and raised their kids on the Stevens’ family farm in Weathersfield Bow, where he lived the rest of his life in rural idyll.
Jay was a writer, poet, journalist, and social historian. He wrote several books including Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, Drumming at the Edge of Magic, and Planet Drum, and was a noted expert and lecturer on states of consciousness, the history of psychedelics, and the radical politics of the 1960’s. He released two albums of his spoken word poetry set to music: Dance House and Orphic Revival. He also created and ran RAP LAB, a program which helped at-risk youth channel their energy into music.
Yankee by birth and temperament, he was equally skilled at composing a sonnet or making maple syrup. Like most of his tribe, he was a gifted storyteller and was friends with many idiosyncratic characters. He was a man who equally enjoyed the solitude of the woods and a damn good party.
He never met a cat who didn’t love him.
He is fiercely missed.
He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Sara, his son, Zach Stevens (Lauren Ballard), daughter, Alexandra Stevens (Steven Hinz), his brother, Warren Stevens (Paula Stevens), his nieces and nephews, and his grandchildren, Sequoia, Canyon and Asa, who knew him by his chosen moniker, Bop.
A celebration of Jay’s life will occur in August, the date still to be announced. It will be on his land in Weathersfield Bow, with the spirit of festive energy, as he would have wanted.
Knight Funeral Home was entrusted with arrangements. Condolences may be expressed in an online guestbook found at www.knightfuneralhomes.com.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Jay Karl Stevens.