The Keeper

My friend Steve is gone, but the story's not over.

Steve and I walking back to our cars after a Friday morning news meeting. Jeanna Shepard photo.

This was not how the story was meant to end. Steve was supposed to have another round of treatment, put that cancer to bed, and get on with retirement. Get on with scalloping and blueberry picking and jelly-making and gardening and baseball-watching and sunset-swimming and lighthouse-keeping and singing at the top of his lungs and loving Liz and living to a ripe old age in their storybook gingerbread cottage.

I feel like the writer of this story threw us (Steve’s colleagues and friends and family) a curve ball – an unexpected and unwelcome plot twist that leaves you going, “WHAT? No way! That’s not fair.”

It’s just not fair.

The cancer treatment weakened Steve’s lungs, he got pneumonia, and after a startlingly quick succession of ever scarier days, first in the hospital here and then in Boston, the day arrived when he could not breathe on his own. He did not want to be put on life support, Liz said, in her devastating and surreal role of communicator of her husband’s status to friends and family.

For four days, Steve managed to squeeze in a text here and there to his beloved former colleagues at the Vineyard Gazette, where he worked for 35 years, most of that time as the art director of the newspaper.

Saying goodbye by text.

It was important to him (a gentle giant if there ever was one), as he watched over every intern and young reporter – and anyone else who arrived in the newsroom. And even though he retired a year ago, he didn’t stop checking in with his people. As my colleague Bill Eville wrote so eloquently this week, Steve was the heart and soul and soundtrack of the newsroom.

And as Bill points out, Steve was so kind to everyone that we all thought we were his special friend.

My friendship with Steve, who was exactly my age (born in 1962), grew from a few different places. But it started because I already knew (and already adored) his wife Liz before I took a full-time job at the Gazette in 2017. She and I met in a women’s group and found we had a lot in common, including a love of writing and reading and making art.

When I arrived at the Gazette in the newly created position of special projects editor — which meant I worked with both the newspaper crew and the magazine folks but didn’t really belong with either — my boss thought it would be appropriate for me to have an office of my own. But the only available spot was a former darkroom with a sloping ceiling, one window, a gargantuan desk/worktable and a wall of bookshelves lined with rare books and material from the Gazette archives. (The paper has been in continuous publication since 1846.) On one wall hung a framed print depicting the shipwrecks of Martha’s Vineyard, which I hoped was not an ominous sign.

It was (is) a quirky space with a strange feng shui.

There was no actual door on this office, and it was right next to the newsroom. So Steve made it a point to wander in every afternoon or around lunch time and “check on me.” He would tell me what he was having for lunch. For a while, he was on a health kick and started cooking from one of my veggie cookbooks. He usually brought in leftovers for lunch.

One of Steve’s hauls, soon to be jelly. He had his secret picking spots he visited every year.

He would describe what was blooming in his garden. We always talked about flowers and plants - and beach plums and grapes and everything he would turn into jelly. Sometimes I’d find a small vase with a flower or two in it on my desk in the morning. One day there was a plastic bag of dirt and green shoots that turned out to be a perennial he had divided, Solomon’s Seal. I planted it and this year it has come back bigger than ever, having spread to the breadth of a giant’s footprint.

We talked about his long-time weekend “job” as co-keeper of the East Chop Light, a position he shared with his best friend Rob. The whole idea of being a lighthouse keeper (albeit not an old-fashioned live-on-the-property type) intrigued me so much that I asked Steve and Rob if I could do a story on them for The Vine last year. Our friend and Gazette photographer Jeanna Shepard took wonderful photos of these two and of the lighthouse, and I am so grateful now that we did that story when we did.

As time went on, Steve and I talked more and more about our ages and when would be the right time to stop working. Eventually, he opted to retire, and I worked out part-time, remote employment, my home office having a better feng shui, despite my occasionally cranky husband working at the other end of it.

Sometimes Steve and I talked about Liz. (Ha, she doesn’t know this. Sorry Liz! It was all good – except that he lamented that he couldn’t get her to eat more vegetables.) His love and care for her was always so evident to me. And this is the thing that makes me so happy even in the midst of so much sadness. To know that someone I care about had such a kind and loving spouse is so gratifying.

Saturday would have been their 28^th wedding anniversary and they had been together for a total of 35 years. (I don’t know, but I’m sure music had something to do with getting them together.) Steve texted me this photo two years ago, on May 9, 2024, from a restaurant where they were celebrating their 26th anniversary.

Liz and Steve (especially Steve) are essentially private people, despite the fact that both of them have given so much to our community. For a long time, Steve did not want more than a few people to know he was sick. (Knowing him, I think he didn’t want to “burden” people with worry.) And I respected that by being available to Liz but staying mum around others.

But in the end, I was relieved and heartened to know that he was in touch with his Gazette crew. There was a goodbye party for a young reporter last Friday night at a local bar, and Bill told me that they were sending texts back and forth to Steve in Boston, letting him know they were holding a spot for him. No doubt the idea of an ice-cold beer and some raucous laughter was a sweet balm.

It was only four days later that Liz texted to say that he had left us. It just seemed so unreal, so impossible, and so very unfair to Liz. It still does.

The protagonist is not supposed to die.

Steve had such a presence that when I went down to the office in Edgartown Wednesday morning, I could hear his booming voice in the production room, I could see him at his desk with a giant vase of forsythia. And when I left, I could swear I saw him walking down the cobblestone sidewalk on School street, taking his afternoon walk around the block.

I know there is no way to rewrite the ending of this story, but I also know that the story isn’t really over. Steve touched so many lives. His “kids” are out there reporting at The New York Times, writing for The New Yorker, getting MFAs, editing magazines, playing music, raising kids – and hopefully passing on to others the compassion Steve showed them.

It’s a life well-lived, don’t you think, when you can be the pebble that starts a ripple of kindness? ❤️