Steven Havill, 81, passed away on August 27, 2026, after a life defined by curiosity, "people watching", hard work paid and volunteered, with a deep commitment to helping young people.

Born the third son to the late Edward and Margaret (Nasset) Havill, at Penn Yan, New York, on June 22, 1945, his education began in a rural stone-built schoolhouse on the hillside overlooking Lake Keuka and its swampy inlet surrounded by vineyards and deciduous forests. Schooling included much time exploring that environment in canoe and on bicycle. In high school Steve found an interest in music, learned to play the cello and enjoyed being a tenor in various choral groups. He also discovered the joy of literary expression in essays and short stories.

College began with studies in biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York but changed with the death of his journalist/author father. The need for employment led him first to the Eastman Kodak company in Rochester, New York, where he became interested in photography: taking artful pictures and developing film, observing the machinations of industry, bureaucracy, and city life. All fodder for an active imagination bent on storytelling. An opportunity arose to join family friends in the Southwestern State of New Mexico where he found paid work as the first employee at Ron Peterson's firearms shop dealing with antique, frontier and modern arms for people from all walks of life. He became aware he would like to write fiction based on his growing experience and would like to be gainfully employed teaching secondary school. First, he would need to return to college for a Master's of Arts degree, after accumulating tuition funds. Journalism offered the means for employment in the guise of an interview with the owner of the Geneva Times (the newspaper at Geneva, New York), the owner on vacation in Tucson, Arizona!

At the university Steve met Kathleen while enrolled in a physical education class focused on horsemanship, accumulating hours on horseback in the hilly country of Tijeras Canyon east of Albuquerque. She had graduated in spring, and he graduated mid-winter, each with a Bachelor's of Arts degree. They were married on February 4, 1969, breaking tradition with a guitarist for musical interludes instead of an organ. Immediately they departed for New York and his employment as reporter/photography for the Geneva Times newspaper. The cold of winter commuting prompted them to return to New Mexico and the gun shop. They found a modified garage in Atrisco but soon moved to an adobe house in Belen, New Mexico, where Steve found employment at the Belen News Bulletin—a six day a week endeavor. No time for exploring the environment. They packed up the pickup truck and returned to New York, staying in the small cabin by the lake house, determined to survive the winter commute, once again to Geneva, New York, but this time as teachers at a private high school where a license was not necessary. Steve thrived with the exchanges of ideas among young people. Kathleen learned that she was not cut out to teach school. She volunteered with the budding historical society in Yates County.

Summer beckoned with employment by the YMCA based in Chester, , Connecticut where Steve had spent previous summers as counselor. Now he was Unit leader for a group of high schoolers and "wilderness" camping in Maine. They traveled now in a British sports car, visiting county fairs on the way home, delighting in the traditions unlike western rodeos.

The inheritance gained from his paternal grandfather's investments in Eastman Kodak provided them thirty-six acres of abandoned vineyard, with a flat spot above the ruins of the original farmstead, and the funds for commissioning a log cabin in their absence. With a camping friend, Steve built a tall field stone chimney at the end of the log rectangle and spent weekends laying a wood plank floor and dividing the space into suitable rooms.

When summer ended, he was invited to join the reporting staff at the Chronicle Express in Penn Yan and kept them well supplied with photographs for each article, from elderly cats to school sports, an eight-legged deer for April First, and aerial views enabled by his newly acquired private pilot's license earned in a J3 Cub at the airport in Penn Yan. His education continued with ride-alongs with the Sheriff's department, the behind the scenes of rural life fueling his active imagination for story lines. Steve's writing acumen and quick ability to learn how to spell (!) earned him the position of swing-editor for a series of newspapers in the "southern tier" of New York state. But the constant gray skies and cold mists slowly eroded their enthusiasm; they yearned for blue skies and vistas, and he really wanted to teach school.

Steve and Kathleen returned to Albuquerque where Steve enrolled again at the University for a Master's in Arts, supported by employment at Ron Peterson's gun shop. The sale of the log cabin purchased a comfortable house in the city for two years. The constant roar of traffic on the new interstate barely a block away encouraged them to find a smaller urban environment. They settled in Milan, a neighboring hamlet to Grants, New Mexico, and quiet. even with the rumble of the Atchison & Topeka railroad merely a block away. They spent every spare moment volunteering for outdoor activities with the Bureau of Land Management, especially enjoying aerial photography of 19th century

Basque ranches and 1930s homesteads in the future wilderness area south of Grants-Milan. Their job was to hike in, with tripods, cameras and measuring tapes to record the homestead layouts discovered by aerial photographs. The most rewarding find was a stone-built schoolhouse on a shelf of rock above a small town, missed by the original surveyor. The wife of the Bureau's agent, a journalist, found the ninety-four-year-old woman who had taught school there! (El Malpais, Mt. Taylor, and the Zuni Mountains — A Hiking Guide and History, by Sherry Robinson, UNM Press, Albuquerque, 1994).

Steve taught senior English and Biology Il at Grants High School where the student body was a grand mixture of Native Americans, Cowboys, miners' sons and daughters, Spanish families of several generations in the area, all fascinating people for him to add to his repertoire of characteristics. The seniors discovered they also enjoyed writing and soon set up a school newspaper, complete with off-set printing press. When the (uranium) mines closed and the rowdies moved away, the town became a happy place. Then the superintendent of schools passed away and so did the freedom that the teachers had had for hands-on learning. They left town in a block and dispersed throughout the state. Steve took a sabbatical in spring and the couple lived off the sale of the airplane.

Steve's teaching peers from Grants learned of his lack of employment and began sending pleas to come to their schools. Steve had learned and pondered the lack of preparedness students had for secondary schooling. He wished to teach sixth grade towards mending the situation. Ruidoso, New Mexico, offered the choice for sixth or eighth grade and the couple toured the area for a suitable place to live in the country, a warm winter commute would be no burden. They found themselves in a hundred-year-old farmhouse in the Rio Bonito valley at Old Lincoln Town, Lincoln Co., haunt of Billy the Kid and Smoky Bear! Weekends saw the renovation of three adobe rooms into the classic two-story high-pitched roof of early Spanish style with enclosed patios at each entry and tiered gardens stretching from the back of the house to the irrigation ditch at the foot of the cliff bounding the South side of the valley.

By now, Steve had authored several fiction books: four frontier westerns where the doctor was the good guy, not a drunken do-nothing; the beginning of a series of cop procedurals (westerns went out of favor, even on television), the environment in rural southern New Mexico with a grand mix of Spanish, Mexican, Ranchers, Miners, Artists, Musicians and a good doctor. But, alas, the school district, which was thriving with hands-on team-teaching methods, lost the superintendent and the replacement was too self-important to see how the system was working. Well, now it was close to retirement for the group of teachers and once again they dispersed. Steve chose to retire. Once being at home during the winter hours, he became aware of the days' light fading behind the southern cliff at two in the afternoon, much too early. They put the house on the market and went to visit small towns where necessities like groceries, banking, live theater, library, and walking parks were within walking distance. The goal was to visit the Pacific Northwest that Steve was researching for stories of adventures by early frontier doctors. They stopped in Raton, New Mexico, to spend the night and called Lincoln to hear how the house-sitter was faring.

"I've sold the house," he said. On the way home from Seattle, Steve and

Kathleen toured Raton and it fit the bill perfectly and better. As a resident of Raton, Steve could enroll at Trinidad State Junior College, Colorado with resident tuition status, attending the gun smithing program towards an Associate Degree and filling "another square" in his accumulation of life experiences. He rode along with State Troopers this time around. And Kathleen had a municipal art gallery for volunteering and showing her art which had blossomed while living in the Rio Bonito valley. Steve found employment at another gun shop briefly but began writing in earnest, enjoying giving "author's talks" at libraries in small communities.

The Raton Library offered him space to give a workshop, payment in a plate of chocolate chip cookies. After many questions and answers one fan tentatively handed him a crumpled note from a friend asking what it would take to have him journey to a small library in the forest west of Datil, New Mexico. "Chocolate Chip Cookies," he wrote, writing his telephone number on the note. Visiting the Baldwin Cabin Library snuggled among Ponderosa Pines on hilly country rekindled the desire to live in the country again. We mentioned that to the Librarian who turned and pointed to a white haired gentleman. identifying him as a real estate agent who could help us. Indeed, he did, having just listed a decent place five miles outside of Datil, only used occasionally as a summer get away by a pair of university professors.

Once again Steve and Kathleen followed this impromptu opportunity with open curiosity and desire for new country, more interesting neighbors and quiet. They lived together for sixteen years in the open Ponderosa Pine, Pinon and juniper forest, the longest stretch of time in one place during their fifty-seven years together. Steven is survived by his wife, Kathleen, his eldest brother Eric and wife Barbara, their children Aaron and Laura; the two sons, Justin and Joshua, of the older brother Mark who passed away last year, and the grandchildren of Mark. After a bout with bone cancer, Steven Havill has found peace and quiet and our memories of him gives strength to us all.