Father Steele

Tom Steele S.J. died of natural causes last week. He was seventy-six. I saw the obituary notice Friday morning before I went off to meet Bud for some serious handy-manning. Over coffee and oatmeal I cried.

I first encountered Father Steele in an American lit class the second semester of my sophomore year at Regis College. He introduced me to Spiller's The Cycle of American Literature, a book that fueled many a lesson plan in my career as a public high school teacher. I loved the symmetry of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis as explained in that work and ended up applying that thinking to almost everything I ever taught whether there was a connection or not.

He was only in his mid thirties and freshly armed with a doctorate from the University of New Mexico and I was immediately taken by his quiet integrity. I actually went to the library sometime during that semester and read his dissertation. Sure enough, it was a scholarly exploration of the Frontier Thesis and its manifestation in the works of James Fennimore Cooper. Natty Bumpo would have been surprised at how erudite his living at the edge of the wilderness was.

I think Father Steele was the first professor who actually saw through my horrible studenting to the smart but lazy little boy I was. Always in search of a father figure, I sought him out after class with sophomoric questions and comments, all of which he patiently listened to and then politely answered or explained how they missed the mark by just a tad. He liked my voice on paper even as he was dismissive of my lack of scholarship and kindly gave me a string of B's on my last minute essays written in my messy room the morning they were due.

We became friends through chance encounters in the snack bar where we would sit until the wee hours of the morning smoking Lucky Strikes and drinking pots of coffee while we talked about everything from Viet Nam to Jacobean poetry. I loved John Donne and Father Steele kindly helped me figure out Donne's increasingly elaborate conceits. As I took more classes from him my junior and senior years our after hours encounters moved to Ernie's, a funky little bar on the corner of 44th and Federal. Father Steele drank beer with scotch chasers, just like my grandmother, and I used my masterfully doctored fake i.d. to drink right along with him. Jesuits don't spend too much time fretting over minor sins involving good liquor.

I was a frequent guest in his tiny room at Carrol Hall where he would show me his impressive collection of Santos from New Mexico that he collected while working on his highly regarded book, Santos and Saints. I think he had one of the largest personal collection of Santos in the world. He ended up donating his entire collection to Regis so as not to violate his vow of poverty. The collection now held by Regis University is as impressive as any museum collection in the country.

Father Steele baptized my son Christian. He was a frequent visitor to my home and livened up many a party with his wry sense of humor. He, as much as anyone in my life, can be held accountable for the way I think, value, argue, and love. Even though I had lost track of him over the years, his death has reminded me of so much that I treasure. I miss him more than I can say.