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Did anyone read Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” lately? “Time held me green and dying / though I sang in my chains like the sea.” It does not seem any less of a loss now, but Steve died eleven years ago, of lung cancer, after wine tasting, bridge playing, marrying, and thinking his way through the maze of Harvard Law School, Mexican restaurants, Sullivan & Cromwell, and the Wonderland of tax law. He was one of the Telluride breed of Princetonians, and James Ward Smith ’38, professor emeritus of philosophy, who found so many of us in that summer program at Cornell, found in Steve a special favor – in the realm of philosophy – a certain ability to be enchanted and not become unthoughtful.
His widow, Gail, has taken the law part on, along with a generous dose of the thinking we learned from him when he was with us. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle applies absolutely to Steve. He was here and is gone, but he remains here, beyond but clearly held in memory and understanding. He is survived by Gail, his parents, Robert and Gerry, and his sister, Candee, along with all of us who remain and remember him.
© 1988 Class of 1967 and The Princeton Alumni Weekly, where it appeared June 15, 1988. Used by permission.
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