Thomas R. Spoonerow

Loving husband, father, grandpa and brother, Tom Spoonerow passed away on Sunday, January 19 at the age of 82 after a tough year of battling health issues.

Tom was born in Culver City, CA. to Boyd and Marjorie Smith on 8/21/1942. He grew up with his two sisters, Becky and Dottie in Newport Beach, San Juan Capistrano and Spooners Mesa in San Diego. They moved to Santa Barbara when Tom was 15 and he attended San Marcos High School where he played football and graduated with the first graduating class of 1961.

Tom never moved from his beloved city of Santa Barbara. He married young and had his first family here and then married again in later life and raising his second family with his wife of 40 years, Dana Spoonerow. Their last names Spooner and Rowe went together well so they decided to create a new name, Spoonerow for their kids to carry on.

He was a man defined by his work ethic which could be described as strong but that would be an understatement. Most people remember Tom from his early days managing the Foster Freeze stores on the Mesa and Micheltorena Street and Kaysers Nutrition Center in 5 Points and La Cumbre Plaza where he demonstrated his love of hard work and perfectionism. He moved on in the mid-1980’s and created a successful wholesale plant and flower business based in Carpenteria where he traveled up and down the coast of California in his large refrigerated truck, providing flowers to the many nurseries and flower shops that were part of his clientele. His love of plants and flowers was epic, and led him to buy the Fairview flower shop in Goleta in the mid-1990’s. By the early 2000’s he had moved on again to operating his own landscaping business where his ability to do physical labor tirelessly, was definitely a benefit. He semi-retired from landscaping but continued to work in his own yard, obsessively as some might say, earning the nickname “Farmer Tom”. He would tend to his vegetable garden with the same intensity that he put into every business he ever owned and job he ever had, and would then deliver whatever the family couldn’t consume to his neighbors and the Santa Barbara Food Bank.

To say Tom loved hard work doesn’t begin to describe the man, and his greatest achievement in life was passing that work ethic on to his daughter Bonny, who taught kindergarten and 1st grade for 30 years, his son Craig, who inherited his amazing sales abilities, and to his twin sons, Tyler, a compassionate and skilled x-ray technician in a surgery center and Casey, an aerospace engineer for Northrup Grummon. They all made him incredibly proud and are extremely grateful for the Tom Spooner work ethic he passed on to them.

This summary of Tom’s life wouldn’t be complete without mentioning his love of classic cars and his passion for showing the ones he owned at the many local car shows. He was fortunate to have been able to buy, enjoy and then sell many of the cars from his youth that he always dreamed of owning. He made many good friends through-out the classic car community in Santa Barbara.

In his later life, as mentioned before, his passion became his gardening where he planted and tended to his multiple vegetable beds, fruit trees and many, many flowers. He was a perfectionist and was only satisfied when every leaf was picked up and every hedge trimmed to precision. The countless hours he spent in his garden gave him a sense of purpose and pride throughout the last 10 years of his life. He loved watching his grandchildren pick peas, tangerines, carrots and peppers and eat them straight off the plants.

He and Dana were also able to enjoy some travel as well, to Albuquerque to visit Bonny and Craig, to the Pacific Northwest to see their many friends up there, Cambria at least twice a year and, his last big trip a year and a half ago to Bisbee, AZ where he rode on a tiny train down into a copper mine, his sense of adventure had not diminished.

2024 was a tough year for Tom. Multiple health issues kept him from his gardening and traveling was difficult. Despite that, he was able to go on the annual Spoonerow family vacation in September with Dana, Tyler and Casey and their families to Flying Flags in Buellton during the vintage travel trailer show and he had a blast.

Tom is survived by his wife Dana Spoonerow, his daughter Bonny Prince, her husband Richard and grandkids Callie Mae and Andrew and great-grandson Casen, his son Craig Spooner, his wife Tamera and grandkids Jessica and Tristen, his son Tyler Spoonerow, his wife Keren and grandkids, Ryder and Emmy and his son Casey Spoonerow, his wife Maggie and grandkids, Mia, Kiana and Camila. He is loved and missed by all his family and friends.