About Steve

As a teenager in the 60s, I became aware of hideous acts of racial violence. I saw news reports of good people battered and bloodied and killed because of the dark color of their skin. News anchor Walter Cronkite made me aware of innocent people traumatized by extreme racial intolerance, about the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Nashville, about the atrocities of the Vietnam War, about the march in Selma, Alabama, about the horror of the conflict in Southeast Asia, about the treachery of President Richard Nixon. During college, I voiced opinions about these societal dilemmas, but I did not step up. 

A few months after my retirement from dentistry in 2010, I stumbled upon an opportunity to take action on my convictions. I seized upon the offer to start writing historical non-fiction and developed my voice through the printed word. During my six-year stint as a Contributing Editor for This Land Press magazine in Tulsa, I researched for new essays, and discovered nuggets of history about my adopted city. I had no idea about the racial history of the community. I found the awful truth surrounding Tulsa's Race Massacre of 1921; some might call it genocide. As a white man, I was appalled by the atrocities. As a member of humanity, I was enraged. My articles about subjects little known or hidden from sight by generations became front-page news. 

My passion for writing continues, and I have broadened my base. During the summers of 2017-2019, I participated in writer's workshops at the University of Iowa, which opened my eyes to personal essays and creative non-fiction. My essay about the war protests of May 1970 at the University of Iowa resides on the pages of the spring 2020 issue of The Iowa Review.

I live with my wife, Sue, in a shaded, older neighborhood near downtown Tulsa. I graduated in January, 2022 with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, Lesley University's Creative Writing program in Cambridge, MA..