Stephen David March died on Oct. 28 after a long illness.

Steve was the beloved son of Robert and Florelle March of Newtonville and Oak Bluffs. Born in New Jersey in 1946, Steve’s early childhood saw the family moving to Rochester, N.Y., Roxbury and Cambridge, and Hamden, Conn. When the family moved back to Boston in the early 1960s, Steve attended English High and then enlisted in the military and served in Viet Nam with the Air Force Security Police.

Family lore states that the Marchs’ earliest connection to the Vineyard began in the 1930s, when Steve’s aunt Ruby Verlaine, his father’s older sister, summered in Vineyard Haven. Steve’s father Robert worked during the summer on the overnight ferry that came up from New York. Steve’s first appearance on the Vineyard occurred six months before he was born when his parents vacationed in Oak Bluffs, a forecast of many happy days spent on Vineyard beaches.

As a teenager, he spent idyllic Vineyard summers in Oak Bluffs, coin diving at the ferry dock and hanging out with his friends on Circuit avenue and on all the Island beaches. His parents built a house in Oak Bluffs where they spent summer vacations as well as Thanksgiving and many fall and spring weekends.

After returning from Viet Nam, Steve married Aleta Male of Boston and had one child, his beloved daughter Nichole, who inherited her father’s love of the Vineyard beaches after she outgrew her initial dislike of sand. It was during this time that Steve developed his two major passions: fishing and gardening. This is a direct inheritance from his mother Florelle, an expert in both. He fished everywhere in all conditions; on beaches, from boats, from docks and jetties. There is a family photo of him surfcasting in Lobsterville with a cast on his leg. As his four grandchildren grew up, he introduced each of them to fishing and they continued the tradition. His skill as a gardener can be seen by the care he has taken with the family property over the last years of his life.

Steve was a force of nature. He will be missed by all of his Vineyard friends as well as all of the new friends he made wherever he went. He was predeceased by his parents, Robert S. March and Florelle J. March, and survived by his sister, Angela M. March of Havre de Grace, Md.; his daughter and son in law, Nichole and Ronald Deas; his four grandchildren, Raphael, Bethany, Taylor and Angeline Deas; and his beloved companion of many years, Rica Smallwood. He is also survived by many cousins and their extended families: Jean King of Reston, Va., Harold Raymond of Roslindale, Janet Jackson and Leonard Jefferson of Arlington, Tex., Kathy Curry of Haymarket, Va., and Robin McAloney of Poinciana, Fla.

A memorial service will be held at the Portuguese American Club on Nov. 18.