"'Citizen Steebs' Randy finds a liberal who rose the hard way" from the May 25, 1972 Door County Advocate, and a reader's response from June 15, 1972
By RANDALL NICHOLAS
THE GLAMOROUS LIFE of a newspaper feature writer is epitomized in this far from candid shot of Keta Steebs at home. While unable to vacuum under the davenport, she did manage to pick up most of the popcorn spilled earlier by her husband's thoughtful children. After that she spent a jolly evening ironing shirts.
"Citizen Steebs" Randy finds a liberal who rose the hard way
By RANDALL NICHOLAS
"Citizen Kane," the classic movie by Orson Welles attributed to be about newspaper mogul and politician William Randolph Hearst, begins with his heavy subject's dying words; one, to be exact — "Rosebud." The rent of the movie unravels the life of Kane through a tiny snipe of a reporter's research into the notorious past of the man —"Rosebud" discovered to be the name of a sled Kane had as a child when his foster parents turned him over to the Bank for his upbringing. His rise to power is seen, thereby, as making up for the vacuum created by a misplaced object of early affection.
If "Citizen Steebs" — to this snipe of a reporter's eyes, a subject no less ponderous, with a past no less notorious — were to suddenly kick the bucket, her dying word would not be some inscrutable reference to early childhood. More likely it would refer to something currently on her mind — I suggest, "Sewage District," "DNR," or possibly, "Bill Carrick" or "Herman."
Although Keta Steebs' inner motivations may not be so momentous — she is not "power mad" so much as just "mad" or angry at times — her arena not so vast — she doesn't want to conquer the world, just Sister Bay — her make-up hardly inscrutable — "Everybody knows my story," she says — I think it would be in the best interests of the Door county public for her to be exposed, and for, perhaps, at least one of her great contradictions to be resolved.
Like many "larger than life" figures Keta appears to be not one person, but two. At times she is the Crusader — like it or not what she is crusading for or against — unrelenting in her pursuit, vitriolic in her attack, unable to keep her nose — with its self-assured ability to smell, out what she feels fishy and the corrupt — out of other people's business. Need I refer any further than to her beginning of the year attacks on the DNR and her letter of Feb. 24 telling the story of a Sister Bay board meeting not as a reporter but as a "private citizen" and "taxpaying resident," and signed "Mrs. Herman Steebs."
At other times she is the Frustrated — the embattled housewife losing out to family pressures, or the embittered schoolchild unable to cope with life. Again, we need only recall the recent, "You Won't Have Keta Steebs to Kick Around Anymore," in which, under sardonic fire by her family, friends, and editor for losing an election, she considers the possibilities of self-immolation, only to give it up with fear that she would be too polluting; or that self-effacing image she creates of herself as a gradeschooler in the "Casting Creations" article, in which her plaster of paris bust of George Washington comes out of her schoolbag once she gets home looking "more like Martha."
How does one reconcile the two images, resolve the contradiction? Our only recourse is to dig up the nasty past. I frankly wasn't aware this was the only recourse until, having approached Keta on the subject, she sat me down and told me the story of her life. What depth of concern there is in this woman! Knowing by instinct my desire to get out a "good" article, she took up her precious time that Friday afternoon in the Advocate office and rattled on and on about herself for hours.
At age three Keta had apparently already revealed her true colors. Known as the "Terror of Boyington Street" in Iron River, Mich., she seemed to be constantly at odds with other little girls and boys her age. By the time she was seven and her family had moved to Homestead the scope of conflict bad escalated to rock fights and through eighth grade she was still capable of beating up every boy in school. Looks bad, doesn't it?
Well, by graduation time from high school she was president of the senior class, champion debater of the Upper Peninsula with a cum laude to boot. Only she didn't go on to college — her family not having the money —but went off that Summer of '42 to Milwaukee instead to seek employment. All her credentials landed her a soda-jerking position in Walgreen's. In 1944 alone she went through 17 jobs.
After the war, when, under RFC, the companies with defense contracts were making their peace-time conversions, Keta finally lied her way into a typing position and settled down with Price Erecting Company in Milwaukee, typing off long lists of numbers. Keta could not type. She had dropped that course in school since she foresaw it would pull down her grade average. Anyway, her slight bending of the truth at this point leads into an amusing anecdote, an incident which changed the course of her career.
It seems that in order to keep up with the other girls — her plink, plink, plink not quite up to speed — Keta had to get to work early, leave late, and type during her lunch hour. She recalls one lunch break when two old men came in and asked for her boss, a cruel and grueling overseer for whom she still retains an enormously small amount of sympathy, and taking pity on the apparently jobless derelicts she offered to share her limburger cheese and Bermuda onion sandwich with them and bought them a coke. The two of them turned out to be Leo and Sylvester Price, owners of the company, and long after all the other employees had gone, including the boss, one remained: Keta, to do the Price brothers' bookkeeping. She didn't know anything about bookkeeping, but, as the two had ascertained that lunch hour, she was willing to learn and work hard at it.
But Keta left Price Erecting in the late 40's, went home for a rest after two traumatic engagements, and wound up writing copy for radio station WMIQ in Iron Mountain. She had always liked to write. Her original letter to the station expounded on her love of words as well as including some sample copy on orange juice and Coleman oil burners. She was hired on the spot.
In 1950, however, she married Herman Steebs, and for one half of one day became a housewife. Nothing against Herman, but somehow his Hatley, Wis., homestead, twenty miles east of Wausau, with its pump, its heater that "did a jig across the floor," and its outside toilet with a dead cat caught in the door, combined with his "I'm the breadwinner, you stay at home," philosophy sent Keta driving into Wausau, filling out job applications all over town.
There was an opening in the classified ad department of the Wausau Record-Herald, and Keta wrote ads for three years, adding on a shopping column, creatively called Keta's Korner, for which she built up a large readership and clientele and a bonus of four dollars to her $35 per week income. She was more angry than gratified when a real estate salesman complimented her on her column since it had got him a sale with a first customer along with a $2000 commission. Keta turned to real estate. The fourth woman such employed in Wausau, she was bringing in a good income to boost her supermarket husband's and had just put her woman's finishing touches on a new home when, in the Fall of 1956, they moved to Door county.
Herman had always wanted his own butcher shop, and, on the advice of Keta's sister and her husband who lived in Sister Bay, they moved into a meat market and apartment there. So, for twelve years, Keta was check-out girl at Steebs' Market. Something got her writing again though, and in 1961 she had her first free lance feature story published in the Door County Advocate, on knitting a sweater for an unborn child. She didn't expect any pay, so, much to her surprise, Chan Harris sent her ten dollars and asked her to do feature work for the North county area.
Probably the best remembered piece from her free lance era is her eulogy in January of '63 to Robbie Kodanko. This was one of the articles which won her a full-time place on the Green Bay Press-Gazette staff in 1968. Eight months later, though, when an opening appeared on the Advocate's staff, Chan wooed her back, and now — as we all know — he and we have her full-time.
"I've always been a fighter," says'` Keta. The Terror of Boyington Street falls neatly into place when one knows most of those early fights were to protect her "kid sister." She has always been on the side of "the little guy," and believes in everybody having an individual worth and dignity. Some of her best stories, she says, come out of interviews with people deceptively ordinary-looking on the surface. Her lunch break with the Price brothers taught her that.
Why the self-effacement process, though, that has gained grins from so many readers? "When I was a girl," remarks the now beautiful Keta, "I wasn't too good-looking, and so to make friends I had to make fun of myself before they did." She takes pride in her ability to step back from herself and laugh, an ability she sees sorely lacking within individuals in such movements as Women's Lib. "My father was pure Swede, so I know I didn't get my sense of humor from him," she says. "My mother, though, was part Irish."
A fighter bucking an inferiority complex — who can beat that? Certainly not her seven year old who started throwing his ten pins at his bowling ball the other day I visited her at home. "Patrick," she snapped, with that same laser beam look she gives me every time I cross the Advocate threshold, "that's how you broke the lamp globe this morning." Patrick started bowling regular. She's tough, that woman.
KETA FAN
To Randall Nicholas, for his excellent Gunther-like article (DCA 5-25-72) on 'Inside Keta Steebs'; a well earned commend, and a hearty thanks!
I, and perhaps others, have often wondered where this human dynamo gets her energy and drive. Thought she may have had a mini-nuclear reactor stashed In her purse, but now we find that it's part of her constitution. Amazing what comes up when you flavor a Swede with a little Irish.
A truly remarkable and capable individual. And it was Door county's good fortune when the Steebs moved there in '56. One might say it was also fortunate that the recent decision at the Sister Bay polls went the way it did. This way she can continue to serve the entire Door county community.
Don't know whether there's a `Woman of the Year' award given out on the Peninsula, but if there is, please acknowledge this vote for Keta Steebs, Citizen, Sister Bay, Wisconsin.
E. C. THOMAS
Williamsville, New York 14221
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive.
Articles by Keta Steebs
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/keta-steebs
Articles by Randall Nicholas
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/randall-nicholas