Cheryl Ward
It won’t surprise anyone to know that for all of us, memories of Dick Steffy bring a smile in happy remembrance of his warmth, quiet encouragement, understatement, trusting confidence and pleasure of a good joke. Dick loved Lucille and his family dearly, and gave us all a model of how to bring our passion for our work into a balanced life. His vision, near-lyrical presentation of what could be dry and tedious data, and conviction that the people of the past could be detected in those grotty bits of wood inspired all of his students and colleagues, and we are the better for it. But the impact he made on our shared exploration of seafaring, strong as it is, is still less than the personal impact he made on each of us. More than once he told me that the most exciting thing he was doing was driving southeast of College Station or flying off for a visit to spend time crawling on the floor with his grandchildren.
My condolences to all his family, and my thanks for sharing him with us.