Steven Speak

As Steven got older, he did become a tad better at expressing his fond feelings in a conventional way.  I credit myself for that of course.  But particularly when he was younger, you needed to understand “Steven speak” to feel the love.

His secretary, Alma Gilligan, was a phenomenal secretary.  Steven would often come home singing her praises.  He was really grateful to have her as his secretary, but I was concerned that he might only be expressing that to me, not to her.  So one time I was on the phone with Alma, and said:  “I hope Steve tells you how great he thinks you are and how much he appreciates you.”  Alma reassured me that he did.   I was surprised and happy to hear that:  “Really, Alma?”  Alma:  “Oh yes, why just the other day he heard a rumor that I was going to go work for a different lawyer.  He came out of his office, walked up to my desk, said:  ‘Alma, you leave me for another attorney, I’m breaking your knee caps,’ and went back into his office."   

Fortune - by Peter

Then, in 1992, that frightening call from you, Jackie.  Something was terribly wrong with Steve.  He suddenly had a horrible headache.  He couldn't read.  Seeing Steve that evening at Alta Bates -- listening to his soft but perfectly cogent explanation to the neurologist about what had happened.  And then, the doctor reached into his shirt pocket, held up a pen and asked:  "Steve, what is this?"  Steve knew, he knew, just a minute . . . but he couldn't quite get it.  I'll never forget that. 

And here I pause and think back at what might have been in 1992.  That was 20 years ago. 

Another good friend who started at Morrison at the same time Steve and I began -- Darrell Sackl --  wrote the following in response to my note informing him of Steve's passing:

"Peter, thank you for the message about Steve.  I was away for a few days and was not checking my email.  As I have traveled this road and lost along the way a number of relatives and good friends who died too early in their lives, I've come to learn to focus on the blessings in their lives in order to make the pain more bearable.  When I first learned what had happened to Steve decades ago, I thought he would not live long and perhaps be bedridden.  I think I told you that my best friend and roommate during law school had a brother who was five years older.  The brother had graduated from the University of Illinois law school and was practicing at a firm in Chicago where they were raised.  During our first semester of law school, my friend's brother had occur to him what happened to Steve. He was rushed to the hospital, but lived only 12 hours.  He was already married, had one child, and his wife was pregnant with their second child.  The brother's wife and parents were told that, if he had lived, he would likely never have regained consciousness.  Peter, I am trying to focus on and remember today that Steve did get back on his feet, that Steve, as you often told me, seemed to enjoy life fully, and that he was able to enjoy for decades more Jackie and their children -- and see his children grow up.  I am sure this is not comforting today to Steve's family, but I do believe it will be comforting to them in the coming years."

That thought is comforting to me.  

Because I know just how lucky I was.  We all were.  We were able to share that wonderful period of our lives as growing young families.  It doesn't get more precious than that. 

Steve turned misfortune into all of our grace.  He had so much room in that vast mind and heart.  

Yes, now it is terribly sad.  Now the loss still feels unbearable.  Jackie, Alicia, Nick, Lizzie, Bruce, Lynn, Ursula -- he adored you.  He was so proud of all of you.  Our hearts go out to you.

But we are grateful to have had the blessing -- for so many wonderful years -- of Steve's uncommon intelligence, humor, wisdom and sweetness.

Sam's Memorial Speech

            Hi, my name is Sam Kafrissen. Although Steve and I have been 3000 miles apart for nearly forty years I have always considered him to be my best friend. Steve and I lived together for a few years when he was in law school in a group house in Somerville, Mass called Campbell Park. It wasn’t what you would call a commune mostly because Steve and I were never the communal types.

            I first met Steve on Labor Day weekend in 1970. The two of us spent that weekend watching the entire Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy from beginning to end. We were, of course, aided by a few substances and were convinced at the time that we were the only two people in America to watch it all. Or at least the only two who did so without making a donation.

            Nine months later my girlfriend Jeanne, now my wife, moved into Campbell Park and Steve and Jeanne and I became a threesome. Unfortunately, it was not the kind of threesome people refer to nowadays. We were just pals. The joke among us for years until Steve met Jackie was that if Jeanne hadn’t married me she would have married Steve. But in truth it was really just a joke. However, a couple of years ago the four of us were together and an incident occurred in which I stepped up. Steve immediately turned to Jeanne and said, “See, you married the right one of us after all.”

            I owe a great deal to Steve for the important things I learned from him over the years. As most of you know Steve was always an inveterate moviegoer. And his tastes in films ran to the eclectic. From Steve I learned how to recognize what a good-bad movie was. I learned that “The Wild Bunch” was the best western ever made – a film incidentally that Steve and I watched together at least five times. I learned who such important movie characters as “Pete, the bad guy,” “Polansky, the Polish guy,” and “Sean, the Irish Guy” were. I also learned never to talk during movies, because Steve always did.

            Steve also introduced me to Zap Comics and through him I became familiar with such important literary figures as “Mr. Natural, Freewheeling Franklin, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fritz the Cat, and Angel Food McSpade, among others.

            Steve showed me that it was necessary to stop and read every historical marker along the roadside or the sidewalk. He taught me how to TiVo a baseball game and then watch it 45 minutes after it started, thereby eliminating all the commercials and pitching changes. That way you could watch a ball game in 1½ hours, or 1¾ if you were a Red Sox fan like myself, because they scored more runs but also gave up more than the Giants did.

            Steve taught me that you could move beyond being a two-car family, and that once you got beyond three it didn’t matter how many vehicles you acquired after that. He also taught me that putting up with the foibles of one’s spouse was the key to a successful marriage.

            Many of you probably don’t know this but for a brief time back in the early seventies before moving to California Steve fancied himself as a fashion plate. He had just returned from Europe and he went through a period in which he was, shall we say, “styling.” Unfortunately, he had to leave that all behind when he moved out here because he couldn’t take my clothes with him. After that Steve fashion sense turned more toward what we would generously call the “utilitarian.” A few years ago Steve came to visit Jeanne and me and stayed with us for about ten days. Steve was always an early riser so each morning when we would come downstairs Steve would already be sitting on our living room couch usually listening to a book on tape. And each morning he would be wearing the same clothes: a pair of non-descript grayish brown cargo pants and a blue, three-button knit shirt. After four or five days when Steve appeared in the same outfit each day, Jeanne and I began to look at one another and wonder. Around the seventh day Steve asked if he could put some clothes in the wash and we readily agreed. He then dropped four pairs of the identical non-descript grayish brown cargo pants into the laundry basket along with four identical blue three button knit shirts. And this did not count the identical outfit that he was already wearing.

            I would like to close with one final anecdote about Steve. When Steve and Jeanne and I lived together Steve had a habit of leaving a half swallow of Coke or milk or juice in the fridge. He would likewise leave very small bites of some leftover food on a regular basis. Long after Steve moved out here whenever Jeanne and I found such a small amount of something in our refrigerator we would say “I guess Steve Dantzker must be here.” So when we heard the sad news about Steve we began to purposely leave small amounts of food and drink in our fridge so we could say to “I guess Steve Dantzker is here.” –and Steve you always will be.             So, Steve, I thank you for your generosity and hospitality whenever we came out here to visit you and Jackie. But most of all I thank you for your long-term friendship. I will miss our many rambling conversations: the serious ones, the absurd ones and above all others, the ones on subjects that were important only to you and me. And as the boys said to each other near the end of The Wild Bunch, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

On/Off Switch

As many people have already pointed out, Steve talked when he was in the mood and stopped (or never started) when he wasn’t.  It seemed like the internal tape in his brain would start up with something he found more interesting or compelling, which would simultaneously push the mute button for the rest of the world.  Before his stroke, this was frequently accompanied by starting to read; after his stroke, turning on his headphones.   Some examples:

About 10 years ago, Steven came with me to a dinner party given by a man I worked with and his wife at their home in the City.  It wasn’t a large party, about 20 guests.   I reminded him as we crossed the bridge from Berkeley that this was a function with people I worked with, so could he please be socialable.  He said he would.

 The house was a pretty Victorian, with a hallway from the front door straight to the kitchen at the back of the house.  First the living room and then the dining room were off to the side as you walked back. It was a rare balmy night in SF, so the entire party was taking place in the kitchen and back deck.  We got to the party, and Steve was chatting away in the kitchen with people he liked.  Oh, good.  I relaxed my vigilance.  About 45 minutes after we had arrived and dinner was about to be served, I looked around.  No Steve.  I went out to the deck where the rest of the partygoers were.  No Steve.  I figured he had gone to the bathroom.  But after a while, I got concerned and starting searching him out.   I saw that the living and dining rooms had no lights on, so I knew he wasn’t there.   No one was in the bathrooms either.  I started down the hall to the front door to look outside.  As I passed the living room, I saw a shadowy figure just sitting in the dark in a big arm chair.  I rushed over, “Steven, what’s the matter?  Are you OK?”  He said, “Oh, I’m fine.   I’m just all talked out.”  And that was it for sociabililty for that night.  

I always told Steven that he was like a walking Rorschach ink blot test.  When we worked in the same firm, associates would regularly come into my office, worried that Steve was mad at them or didn’t like them because he'd ignored them when they said hi, or he had passed them in the hall without even acknowledging them, or he'd walked off when they were mid-conversation.   They would offer up why that might be:  Steve didn’t think they had gone to a good enough law school; he thought they were a bad writer; Steve thought they were dull, and so on.  Whatever their insecurity, they just projected it right onto Steve.   I had to explain the mind tape on/external world off phenomenon to them, which usually only partly calmed them down, because who actually does that?

Here’s how Jim McCabe (luckily, a secure guy), later told me he handled working with Steve when he was an associate.  He’d walk into Steve’s office, and start in on what he needed to talk to Steven about.  At some point in the middle of the discussion, Steven would start reading something he saw on his desk.  Conference over.   Mike would walk out and wait a half hour or so which would, as he put it, push the reset button.  He’d go back in.  Depending on the day, this might repeat several times before Jim had covered everything he needed to.

One time I ran into Peter Pfister on the bus or BART home.  Peter told me that that day, Steven had walked into Peter’s office wanting his advice on something.  Peter politely pushed the papers he was working on away from him, and turned his attention to Steve.  In the middle of their conversation, the papers that Peter had shoved away caught Steven’s eye.  He turned them around, and started reading them.    As Peter (mock indignantly) said , “I’ve come to expect Steve to do this when I seek  him out, but, I’m sorry, HE walked into MY office asking for help, and then not only tunes me out, but commandeers the document I was working on too?”     

  

Need 3 Eggs - by Larry

With a Safeway less than 10 blocks away and a small neighborhood market 2 blocks away, it would seem a rare occurrence that a call would be made -- one house to the other - to borrow something. For the Staring-Hobel household, borrowing gave us the excuse to come over, say hello and watch the Moore-Dantzker household at its best. Front door unlocked, television on in one part of the family area with kids watching (some Dantzers, some not), computer terminal on in another part of the kitchen, sometimes Jackie playing a computer game while cooking, sometimes Lizzie, hardly ever Steve. Megan or Christina around, Bruce quietly smiling, Emily and Alicia upstairs, Nick (early on with his bag of candies, later with his friends watching TV), Mitts for years, then Mitts and Hudson and then Hudson lying on the couch. Steve having recently walked in with groceries from the store (having cornered the market on Danon coffee yogurts), still listening to his book on tape, and having bought Moore quantities (food enough for 20 to eat for 2 weeks). A quick trip to the refrigerator for the ingredient I needed, and a few minutes for talk and to watch the hustle, bustle. Great fun. I often came with something made in our house (I would like it to be clear that Diana made it and I simply carried it over). Coals to Newcastle (dinner to Chez Panisse), if Jackie was cooking. And, there appeared to be some special norm of reciprocity that required that I carry back more than I delivered.

Of course, the borrowing was not one sided. The telephone would ring. It was Jackie. “Do you have any extra [you name it and she seemed to need it for one of those complex recipes she would try]. We’d say yes and soon the doorbell would ring. Steve would pull off his ear buds and come in.

Now, Steve has long noted the Moore Interval, which we understand to represent the time between the first goodbye and the time the Moore family (principally Jackie, her sisters and her parents) actually get in the car and leave. Steve didn’t really have a Moore Interval, which begins when the person gets up to leave. Rather, he practiced The Dantzker Delay. This was the time between the first moment when he arrived to get what he was supposed to get and the time when he actually got it. Whether he came for a child (when Nick and Alex were young and played together, or when Hilary and Liz were young and played together) or a food ingredient or a chair for a party, he would often arrive and before picking up the child, food or furniture, the talk would begin -- something he heard, something we heard or read, some funny situation, a question to him about the Civil War or WW 1, discussions about cars, about travel, about his adventures when young traveling around the world, about politics, about backpacking, about Mitts’ latest cat food stealing adventure or just about anything.

Imagine the tension we faced. Loving Jackie, we imagined her standing in front of the stove awaiting the egg she needed, setting the table for 16 and wondering whether her guests arriving soon would need to sit on the floor, or wondering if her child and husband had been kidnapped. Should we push him out of our house and stop a delightful conversation or should we let the moment continue? Sometimes we were strong and nudged him out the door. Other times, we simply gave in to the pleasure of his company. As the guilt began to build, the telephone would ring. We wouldn’t even have to answer. It was time for Steve to leave. The child called from upstairs, the food put in his hands, the furniture pulled out of the closet. We always anticipated the next time we would talk, laugh and engage.

Steve wasn’t always so in the moment. Steve learned -- somehow - that he could make time move more slowly. As we all know, he was incredibly smart and his mind was incredibly quick. Yet, he seemed to live a fuller life not by moving nonstop to catch every moment, but to allow the moments to come to him; he seemed, (excuse the rewrite of the cliché) to take the time to stop and think about the flowers. We miss Steve in so many ways. He will always stay with us, especially in those moments when we take the time to reflect on the day, to laugh at the absurd world we live in and when we - in our own way - try to execute The Dantzker Delay.

Getting to the Heart of the Issue - from Diana and Larry

Diana sent this article to Steven:


and his response was: 

Best quote from the article: “There were dwarves there, yes, but that was just the night the bar was having. We didn’t bring them with us or anything.”.

I mean, if dwarves are going to show up, what choice do you have except to throw them?

Steve and Jackie - by Peter

But far more important for Bonnie and me, Steve had become "Steve and Jackie."   Our long-time friends.  A few more fragments over the years.  We recall:

Emandal farm in Mendocino with friends and growing families; 4th of July firecrackers on Parkside; driving the girls to soccer -- "disappearing" as drivers and hearing frighteningly honest and hilarious conversations in the back seat among various mixes of Alicia, Emily, Katy, Julia and others.  More naturally than most of us, Steve was always accepted by the kids -- was always able to be there and yet not intrude.  As more than a few have noted, he was one of them.  He was not judgmental.  He was fascinated by them and fascinating for them.  Steve somehow "customized" his relationships with his own wonderful children -- and all of ours, too.   He was liked and trusted by all. 

New Year's Eves with Steve, Jackie and other friends, talking and eating -- as one can only eat at Steve and Jackie's.  Settling in to a movie to get us to midnight.  Finding it increasingly difficult to get to midnight.  Decades of going together with Steve and Jackie to the Berkeley Repertory Theater.  Sometimes -- well -- I'd say, many times, not making it past "half-time."  Walks around that wonderful house in Kenwood.  Talking about how things were going with our families, ourselves, the world.  Interesting, warm, comfortable friendships.