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Jim Steele served on the Academic Staff Executive Committee (ASEC) this past year. I currently serve as the chair. Jim was a regular contributor to our discussions even calling in when he was too ill to come to campus. He was always thoughtful and original in his comments during meetings. His contributions will be missed by many here at UW-Madison. My deepest sympathy to his family.

I have known Jim, Patty, Laurel and Meredith since i was just 7 years old, the same age my own daughter is now. I have always thought of them as my "second" family and have been calling Jim and Patty, mom and dad for so long that I don't even remember when I started. Having the good fortune of knowing Dad for close to 25 years I have a lot of memories of him. In 90% of those memories he is laughing or smiling. Before Dad passed away I asked Laurel to give him a hug for me so he would know I loved him. She later told me that when she gave him the hug and told him it was from me that he smiled. Having seen his smile for so many times, I could instantly picture it in my mind. I miss you Dad, but will always remember your smile.

My brother James Arthur Steele was my personal piped piper the first 21 years of my life. If Jim did it, I wanted to do it. As things fell out of “his fashion” because a three-year age difference can be a lot in child time, I stopped pursuing them, too. My sister Julie seemed to me to be totally out of my orbit because she is five years older than me. We didn’t really connect until after her high school years. I was just too incredibly annoying. Jim and I played Army crawling on our bellies throughout the house on Morgan Street. We spent hours in a creek near our home, catching crawdads in summer, skating in winter. The block was our backyard. The summers lasted forever back then; we would stage parades, weddings or play wagon train all day – post-breakfast to sunset, except for the times I was forced inside to nap because of my rheumatic fever. Mom and Dad made it plain to Jim and Julie that I couldn’t’ keep up … so sometimes, he waited. He gave me a push up so I could be in the high tree climbers club. And sometimes, like when we were skiing, he was far my greedy reach. There were things, of course, I could not mimic. Knockhockey? Fur-get-aboud it. But we played Battleships for hours and hours. Baseball? Girls didn’t play baseball back then. But I was there cheering. Some of my best memories are during summer daycamp which was just over the fence at Oakdale School. Decorating our bicycles with crepe paper for parades. The carnival at the end of summer. I remember Marty Kiesewater saying how “cool” Jim was. That was it exactly. He was cool But he was a dork, too. Why did he stick his head between the cement pillars at our grade school? He probably saw other kids do it. But we are the family of big heads and he was stuck solid as I fluttered around helplessly waiting for mom to show. Our parents infected us with reading, morals, penny-pinching, travel lust and the belief that all creeds, colors and races were equal. Mom always though Jim should have been a lawyer because he argued so well. We saw so much on our camping trips – nearly every single darn thing west of Illinois. I remember being wide-eyed with amazement as he acted in plays on the small Metcalf stage. I wanted to do that! I saw him put his Pinocchio nose back on when it fell off, do the box step as a Prince Charming… and I wanted to be on that stage, too! He really could not sing or dance … but they still cast him in the high school musicals with starring roles that didn’t require much singing like “Guys and Dolls” and “Thurber Carnival.” He was handsome enough to be “The American Dream” in the Edward Albee play. Now, how many guys were in theater and not gay? I know his Grandfather Bertram was certainly worried about that because at a young age, Jim would rather stay with the girls and play dressup than go out fishing with his grandpa. Jim just never got the lure of fishing, but you can see from the photos today that he never completely gave up dressing up. And the baby doll he got for Christmas that Grandpa thought was wrong, wrong, wrong? Maybe that just made him a better dad. The summer my sister and her family moved to California and my brother set off for college I was devastated. I felt so lonely … and missed them so much. I found out it wasn’t fun to be an only child. We were not actually in a play together until college – because of course I chose the same small, obscure, liberal arts college that he did – MacMurray. They brought “Spoon River Anthology” to U-High to perform and my buttons were just bursting with pride… The family drove down to see him star in shows like “The Little Foxes” with the great actress Christine Ebersole. Straight off my freshman year in college I got the part his girlfriend Cindy Hoey desperately wanted in some play by Jean Anouihl whose name I can’ recall. I scored that part because I am always super at tryouts or cold reads but unfortunately that’s about as good as it ever gets. And “Major Barbara,” where Jim starred and I played “Rummy Mitchems” and I was supposed to get hit every night by Marty Soroka?? I ducked every time and finally figured out that being ON stage wasn’t possible for me. Because when I “acted” I was “acting.” Same with Jim but his superior talent saw him through a master’s in fine arts where we both shared the ISU arena with budding luminaries like Laurie Metcalf and John Malkovich and others who went on to form Steppenwolf Theater. Then he tried a stint in scary, scary Chicago with Wisdom Bridge Theater where I believe he was one of Chicago’s worst cab drivers just trying to make a living to hold onto that fragile absurd dream. With our theater aspirations beaten into dust we both cast around for our next role in real life. And he met this super cool girl and it turned out what he wanted more than anything else was to be with her. Now girls like Patty Conklin went through boys like Jim Steele like Kleenex. I mean, she was majorette at U-High. She was amazed, she related, to meet someone at a theater party who was actually a) not gay and b) not full of himself. It turned out the dozen girlfriends he had before were just dress rehearsals for the real thing. This is the guy who dumped the incredible Connie Carnine because he thought something better would come his way. Well, h wasn’t dumping this one and he was not going to let her get away. He understood her greater talents as a thespian and her need for time to be the ultimate mother, earth goddess and gardener. Jim grew and grew in his roles in college administration and I became so proud of his accomplishments. He was no longer the sun in my universe --- he had new satellites now, two daughters who were in turn enthralled and exasperated with this strange man who was their father. Jim became more of an observer than the star on the stage. He had an ironic sense of humor. If there was one thing he wanted to preach against, it was WalMart and small minds. He loved the outdoors, silly dogs, Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin, which was so super about accommodating him in this difficult last year. Jim didn’t complain about the cards life dealt to him. Scleroderma is a depressing, horrible illness. It’s one of the worst kinds of diseases you can get and only a paltry million dollars is spent in research every year. We don’t know what causes it. We have no idea how to deal with it, let alone cure it. He was matter of fact about it with us. But what kind of reserves did this man have that sustained him for so long with this demon that stole his lungs, his heart, his kidneys – and finally took his life? Forty days after our mother died at the age of 91, a slow, agonizing death, he was gone, like a camp fire extinguished too early. He was there one second, and the next second he was not. We’re left with the sadness and the emptiness and the hole in the fabric of our lives that we cannot weave or mend. I am glad I could share with you today the boy my brother was as most of you know the man. I knew the boy who thought it was a good idea to play football as a freshman in high school and believed a life in theater was possible. Dreams die, but they help to form us. Shakespeare understood this, and I end today with a quote from “The Tempest.” You do look, my son, in a moved sort, As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. .