Remembering Mike Stom.

Mike was raised in Buna, a small town in east Texas. He served in the United States Navy and came home to work for one of the most respected agencies in the country: NASA. Over the next several decades he was part of the Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs. Two of his proudest moments were helping put a man on the moon and contributing to the team that brought the Apollo 13 crew home safely.

He brought that mindset to HVAC. "At NASA, the toughest challenge is to bring a comfortable, safe environment to the cold lifelessness of space," he liked to say. "We bring all that experience and knowledge to your home or business."

Mike retired from the Space Program in 1990 and started Clear the Air the same year. He built the company one house at a time across South Houston, hired and trained techs who would stay for decades, and treated every customer's home the way he had treated mission-critical hardware: precisely, honestly, and with a "failure is not an option" standard. His sons and his late daughter all worked in the business with him. The company became what it still is today: family-owned, locally rooted, and unwilling to cut corners.

Mike retired from day-to-day operations in 2006 and his son Jason continued on with his vision as President. Mike has since passed. The standards he set haven't. Every tune-up checklist, every install procedure, every guarantee in writing, every weekly training session traces back to the discipline he brought from a different kind of life-support work. Every Clear the Air van that rolls through Pearland is, in some sense, still his.

The man behind the company

Mike was a warm and gentle person. He was famous around the office for walking up to a stranger and learning their whole life story before the conversation was done. He was a great listener and an even better storyteller, and anyone who met him remembers his sense of humor.

If anyone in the office mentioned a customer's address, Mike could pull the entire history out of his memory: what we did there, what equipment they had, who lived there, and what kind of people they were. He could go all the way back to 1991. We went to him for customer history before we ever opened the database.

For all the achievements in his career and business, family was the part of his life that mattered most. He and his wife Sandra were married for over 47 years. He was a proud father of three and a grandfather of seven. There was never a day he didn't ask how his children were doing.

His son Jason runs the company now. Jason's wife Dawn works alongside him, and their children Liam and Holly are already part of the company that Mike started. The story keeps going.

If you were a customer of Mike's during his three-plus decades of service, thank you for trusting our family with your home. We carry that forward.

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."
Thomas Campbell