Steve was the first person I met when I joined the Intelligence Community supporting NGA 10 years ago. My whole first day, he gave his time to show me the ropes, helping me get computer accounts, and explaining how things worked. … Well, it wasn’t quite the whole day. As I walked to the parking lot, I looked at my watch again and realized I’d only been there 7 hours. But my brain was full.
Steve had a big brain. His memory was phenomenal. He had half a dozen file cabinets full of Landsat imagery on CD’s. The CD’s came with labels that were an impenetrable string of numbers and letters, sometimes with the coarse 30-m resolution picture. Nobody else would have a clue how to find the right one, but Steve could do it every time, whether we wanted an image of western China, the South Pacific or the Sudan.
His favorite project at the time was GENIE, a state-of-the art algorithm devised by guys at Los Alamos National Labs, and Steve had the foresight that this could help in our mission. As developmental code, there were lots of intermediate diagnostic plots, one of which Steve dubbed the spaghetti plot. He delighted in baffling managers with these plots, which probably gave him insight, but baffled them. I don’t know about Steve’s religious beliefs, but this interest led me to suspect he was an adherent of Pastafarianism, whose deity is the well-known Giant Spaghetti Monster.
Steve had a big brain. In a big head. When we traveled out to Los Alamos to meet the GENIE team, Steve had a special side mission. Not fine art or dining, but a custom-made cowboy hat. I think it was a 20-gallon version.
Besides his scientific prowess, Steve had a special gift for acronyms. He could decode even the most obscure ones, correctly if he wanted, or cleverly, which was way more fun. During one office reorganization, our branch head asked us to come up with a new branch name and acronym. We got stuck with PRIQ; we liked the James Bond connotations in the “Q”, but not the pronunciation. Steve had had a far better idea. He proposed a name that described our mission exactly: “Advanced Exploitation of Information Operations and Undergrounds”, whose acronym is permanently memorable: AEIOU.
Steve had a big brain. And a big spirit of helping. I hadn’t seen him much in the last few years, but a while ago I asked him to help me find some obscure web site, which he did. A few months later, when I had of course forgotten how to get to it, I asked him for help again. That was when I had some hint that all may not be well. Because he tried to help me. He always was willing to help. And in my experience he had always been willing to help. But this time he just couldn’t seem to remember.
But I’ll always remember that better idea for a branch name, and I’ll always remember Steve as a very fine scientist, colleague, and friend. I will certainly miss him.
Memories – shared by Jim Beckwith at 8-7-11 Memorial Service for Steve
For more than a decade, Steve has been like another brother in our family. He is our first cousin, but after his parents died, he had no other family, so we regularly included him as a part of our semi-annual family gatherings at Christmas time and in the summer. We could depend on Steve to share some interesting concoctions as well as hummus and ambrosia salad. We also learned to expect that Steve might not arrive quite when he planned to arrive. He often got caught up in needing to do “just one more thing” before he could get on his way. Sometimes we set a time for our meals earlier than we actually planned to start, hoping that might help Steve arrive on time. Of course, he also had the furthest distance to travel to get to our gatherings – usually a 5-hour round trip – and he always got there eventually, so it was clear that he was committed to getting together with us. And we were glad to have him with us. This procrastination was in contrast to his precision in always wearing a tie to work and calling everyone by the formal title of Gentlemen or Ladies.
Steve’s father served in the military in Germany and Italy, so we had not seen him often while we were growing up. I had opportunity, however, to visit with Uncle Gilbert and Aunt Marie and Cousin Steve several times during my Jr. Year Abroad when I studied as a college student in Germany. Steve was just 13-14 years old that school year, but we got to know each other a bit. Later on, after his mother died, he asked if he could put my name down as his “next of kin” at work, and that gave me a suddenly deeper sense of connection with Steve.
And that’s how we three brothers have functioned these past 14 months. We have been his “next of kin” as best we could. Steve was fiercely independent and we did our best to help him remain able to make as many decisions for himself as he could. We kept him in his own home for as long as we could. We appreciate so very muich the care that you neighbors provided – keeping track of his meds, hosting Steve for meals, taking care of yard work, etc. And we appreciate how the folks in this congregation, especially Ruth Hoover (long-time close friend of our parents) and the pastors, stayed in touch with Steve, making phone calls and hospital visits, as well as supporting us in our caregiving for Steve. We appreciate how you helped us help Steve remain in his home. We worked at round-the-clock nursing care for a few weeks. We knew the prognosis for his type of brain tumor was that he would live about this length of time, and we tried to walk a fine line between realistic planning and hopeful pursuit of whatever options might be available to Steve.
Steve was ready to give up easily, and neither were we. “It is what it is,” he would say. “We’ll see what we can do. They don’t know everything.”
Kent had connections from his workplace to the head of research at Johns Hopkins, and was able to help Steve receive further attention and treatment beyond what his first set of Doctors were able to provide. When the extra efforts were unable to stop the tumor, we brought Steve closer to us, where he was made as comfortable as possible at Landis Homes near Lititz, Pennsylvania, with a room looking out across the beautiful countryside and with the highly respected care of the Hospice of Lancaster County. We are grateful that Steve’s good friend and coworker Ralph Meiggs was able to travel to visit Steve at Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital and then – together with Michelle and with Lou Paolone and his wife – to make a visit with Steve at Landis Homes. That visit took place not long ago. As I understand it, Steve was able to do his typical raised eyebrow, along with a smile, to interact in the conversation.
We will remember Steve’s dry, sometimes wacky humor, as well as his secretive ways of making us guess at what he might be saying … or not saying (you coworkers should be pleased with how strictly and completely he maintained workplace confidentialities!). We will also remember how Steve always wanted us to pass along to everyone in the family his love and best wishes, “etc., etc., etc.” (as he would say). And we will remember you good neighbors and friends who were there for Steve when he needed you. Thank you! We are so very glad that Steve had this network of support and friendship.
