There’s precious little one can add to Gazette reporter Scott Merzbach’s fitting tribute (“An ‘amazing public servant,” Dec. 20) to our beloved friend and exemplary public servant, Steve Kulik — little except this tidbit.
I first met Steve in the late 1970s shortly after he and Suzanne left the Boston area for Worthington. Suzanne and Leslie Laurie worked together for years at the Family Planning Council of Western Massachusetts (later Tapestry Health) and we saw them fitfully. Steve and I reconnected in the mid-1980s when he invited me to join his fantasy baseball league. He was, as his son Sam observed, “an early adopter” of the game. (He was also an early Dead Head.)
In fact, he was one of the league’s most successful participants because in partnership with Nathan Cobb his Danzig Bears (we called ourselves the League of Nations so that team names reflected that context) repeatedly finished first or close to it, in part for Steve’s sharp eye for rising talent, gift for assessing established players, and uncanny knack for swinging successful trades, the acid test of one’s baseball literacy. But you wouldn’t know as much whether you were a recent or lifelong friend. He was probably thrilled to show up his competitors, nearly all of whom were Five College faculty; he was simply too modest and decent for chest-beating self-promotion.
Steve had a ticklish sense of humor. He loved telling stories and jokes that poked fun at human foibles but without sounding mean or condescending because he was unfailingly humane, upbeat, and optimistic. He was one of the nicest, kindest, and most considerate men I have ever met. We were privileged to have called him our voice in politics and I personally wish we had more time together.
Bruce Laurie
Pelham