“Steve” · August 18, 1943 – November 9, 2026
A veteran, a city planner, a soccer player, a golfer — and above all, a father.
Monday, November 16
Visitation · Noon to 1:00 pm
Service · 1:00 pm
Morton & Whetstone Funeral Home · Vandalia, Ohio
Officiated by Roger Thomas
Burial to follow at Willow View Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio
Steve was born in Dayton, Ohio on August 18, 1943, and spent his last years in Aubrey, Texas. He answered his country's call and served in Vietnam — one of a generation of young men who went when they were asked, came home to a country that gave them no parade, and never made much of it afterward.
He came home and gave the rest of his working life to service of a quieter kind. Steve was a city planner, and he brought a great deal to Ohio. Consider what that work really is: where the roads run, where the parks go, where a young family can afford to live. Whole communities carry the hand of the person who planned them, and almost nobody ever learns his name. Steve spent a career making places better for people he would never meet.
He was an athlete to the bone. He played soccer until he was around fifty — still running the pitch at an age when most men have made peace with the recliner. When his knees finally had their say, he took up golf, and by every account in his family: golf he did.
But the thing his family would want said first is simpler than any of it. He raised a daughter who became a nurse and gave thirty-five years to caring for other people. Whatever else Steve built, he built that too.
Aria and Willow
Tom (Pam) · Mary (Ron)
† preceded Steve in death
On the night of November 14, 2026, a memorial show went out on WLOP for Steve — his story, his family, and the music, with photographs from his life.
If you knew Steve, his family would be grateful for a memory, however short.
“A man is measured by who aches when he is gone.”