TDU Remembrances by Ken Paff, Bill Denney, Ann Thompson, Dan Campbell

Ken Paff wrote this and shared it with Steve's TDU friends & family.  Responses follow in dialogue with his.

Today I learned that my friend Steve is gone.  His loving wife Ellen emailed to friends and family that they finally diagnosed that he has widespread abdominal cancer, which probably caused the encephalitis and deliria.  He has been hospitalized for five weeks and gotten progressively worse, without a clear diagnosis until this terribly final one.  It’s been a horrible time for Ellen and Steve’s larger family.

Steve and I were friends since the early 1970s.  We moved to Cleveland in 1973 and were partners in starting TDU.  He would come to my house almost daily and raid the fridge while bringing fresh reports or ideas.  I was the steady-eddy organizer, and Steve was the prosthelytizer and recruiter.   Steve loved to talk with anyone. He did most of the talking but was also a good learner.  He could sit in a truck stop and meet strangers and come back with TDU applications filled in.   His father was a preacher and it showed. If his grandfather had been a wobbly, that would have been even more appropriate. Steve was a passionate wobbly organizer.

His writing was similar. I recall when he discovered the magic of 8-point type, so he could write more about the carhaul contract or grocery warehouse production standards.  We were 30 years old so we didn’t know about reading glasses.

To this day, old-timers in TDU talk about how Steve recruited them, always with a good story and fond memories and commitment.

Later when Steve was in New York, I just saw him at meetings and conferences. He always thanked me for the long-haul work, and I thanked him for the spark. He loved all his friends.  These meetings had a sad quality because the market for wobbly organizers has rather dried up in recent years, and that is a sad fact for all of us who care about making a more just world.

Steve cared about that as deeply as anyone I know.

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From Bill Denney

I've had so many memories about Steve. Many have been funny. Did you know that he lost a tooth while challenging DSA's Roger Robinson from the floor during a debate in Detroit and he didn't lose a beat despite the tooth giving out? I was sitting next to him and he showed it to me when he sat down. "What'd ya think? Not too bad if I do say so myself even with a tooth coming out while I was talking," I remember him saying. Nothing was generic about him. All of my memories of him have been as unique as he was.

Above all, I remember his energy and his smile. He had an amazing heart, with a special love for those of us who looked past his foibles and eccentricities and could see what was underneath, at his core. He was passionate, incredibly passionate. He would never back down from the good fight and there wasn't anyone who was more willing to put himself in harm's way if needed for a just cause or for a friend. He was loyal, a word I don't hear very much anymore. He was brave, a word that I don't hear at all anymore. He was, as you suggest, not modern but someone who lived with tradition, someone who lived with character that had the strength of history behind it.

He had bouts of depression that could be very strong. I saw them overwhelm him at times, but the spark in him never went out until today. I miss my friend. I never felt that Steve was really out of my life. He was just living a little bit further away than he had been when we were in Cleveland and Detroit. About seven years ago he met Maggie when we were in New York. He gave us a tour of the city, including memorable driving skills at keeping pushy NYC drivers from cutting us off. Maggie not only remembers him, but she remembers liking him right away. She told me that he was very kind to her. That's how Steve was. He's someone I will never forget. I'm glad that he was in my life.

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Steve's good friend Ann Thompson wrote to Ken: 

This is an inexpressibly sad time for all who worked with, worried about, became annoyed at, but always deeply cared for - Steve. We first encountered Steve (one didn't just "meet" Steve) when he was surviving on peanut butter and jelly and blowing in and out of our house in Bloomington, Indiana in 1974 - always in hot pursuit of the "Teamster Rank & File", which soon became the touchstone of an entire movement that lives on today. I don't know about his tooth, but I do recall his endearing wire rim glasses.  One day on a boat in a lake at a Teamster brother's home somewhere in rural Michigan, Steve decided to dive in, but forgot to remove his specs. Miraculously, he came up with them hanging by a thread somewhere in the vicinity of his face. From then on - for many years, it seemed - he continued to wear them, always with one earpiece that dangled when he removed them and always hitched together at the nose with adhesive tape.

Throughout the decades that ensued, I always wished that someone should just follow him around to record as oral history for posterity, Steve's streams of consciousness peppered with brilliant ideas large and small, stratagems bold and innovative; and most of all   - his reminiscences of the movement, of battles fought and won and lost. That special part of Steve is gone from us and we are that much the poorer for it.

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A response from Dan Campbell:

I am thankful that I got to talk with Steve several times in the past few years in NY and at the TDU convention. Mandela will have some excellent company in the life hereafter, no doubt. 

I think the most enduring memory I have is Steve talking about his experience at the IBT Convention in 1972 (?)  He and Pete Camarada were there and both got jumped and beaten by Teamster Thugs. I think Steve said his shoulders or an arm was somehow dislocated in the incident. Obviously though, nothing deters a good man from doing what is right. Steve went to work harder for rank and file power and for TDU. 

It is because of guys like Steve that we cannot not stop. How can we when guys like Steve did all that they did.

Dan

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