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STEVEN J. DULLAHAN
11/23/54 - 7/9/89
A BIASED BIOGRAPHY
By Linda Maryanov
Most of you likely last saw Steve on the day we graduated high school. What nobody could have known was that he had then already lived half his lifetime. I enjoyed an uninterrupted friendship with Steve and his family, that remains one of the blessings of my life. Steve was a spirited guy, an unfailing friend, and an intelligent man with a keen sense of humor.
Steve and I went off to Oswego together after high school. He double majored
in music and math, and lived half a campus away. We rarely saw each other during the school term, as our own lives and part time jobs and what have you often intervened. But we would return to Seaford for school vacations, and pick up where we left off - movies, hanging out at each other’s homes, 10 PM tea and toasted bagel at the Lighthouse.
After college Steve got a “real job” with Amtrak, lived in Bucks County, PA, worked first at the 800 number, and later at the Help Desk when his communication skills and computer expertise were soon recognized by his superiors. I would call the 800 number, and we would chat often, never going longer than a week without. In the late 70's Steve was off for a Cape Cod vacation, and late the first evening he was away his friend called me to say that he had just come from Steve’s apartment, which had burnt to the ground from arson. Late as it was, and his first day at that, I waited until morning to notify him. Upon hearing the news he decided to stay in Provincetown, as he had reservations there for a week, and nowhere to go when he got home! That was Steve. There was always another way to view a situation.
Later, Steve moved to Philly. He rose through the Amtrak ranks. We continued to speak and see one another often. I was by this time living in Manhattan, and Steve would spend his days off with me in the City. One particular “weekend” (it was never really Sat and Sun) he had a dilemma. He wanted to come to New York, but had tons of laundry to do. Never daunted, Steve “packed” an enormous suitcase of dirty clothes, and arrived at my apartment with the laundry in tow. “I figured I could see you AND do my laundry.” That was the kind of guy Steve had become.
Around this time, Steve obtained a very part time job in New York (yes, while living in Pennsylvania) doing statistics for BillBoard magazine. Remember how he loved the Top 100? Was this a dream or what!? Steve became very involved in his enjoyment of Broadway musical theater, making many friends in the industry and seeing every show that struck his fancy. Seeing him in his tuxedo the night that “Chorus Line” made musical theater history with its longevity was a very special event. Steve’s love and understanding of music led to his writing a detailed analysis of a Sondheim show, and sending this “term paper” to Mr. Sondheim. This other “Steve” was quite impressed with our Steve’s analysis of his music, and thus began a lengthy penpal and sometimes dinner relationship between the two. I have these letters in my possession to this day, and they include long back and forth discussions of musical elements, lyrics, hand written stanzas by SS, bootleg recordings of “Into The Woods” and other musicals made by Sondheim, himself. How Steve’s music theory professor at Oswego would have been proud!
This was also a time of much recognition for the both of us, as we each individually came to the realization of a gay identity, and began to live our lives more fully. It all was a logical extension of the years that came before.
In the late ‘70's, Steve and I took a trip to Cozumel, Mexico that provides many precious memories for me. I enjoy drinking my morning coffee in the hand painted mug that he bought at an open air market in the Yucatan, while playing with a monkey. Miraculously, this mug survived his apartment fire, as did all of his photographs and his extensive rare record album collection, thanks to a fire wall.
Time passed. I began law school at age 28, and Steve was there at my graduation in 1985. He still lived in Philly, traveled cross country thanks to Amtrak travel benefits, enjoyed theater, and his family and friends. He still loved his music. Remained fluent in Spanish. (Yes, Miss Carley too would have been proud.) Could still do a high school math regents for fun. (I often tell my life partner, Nancy, a high school math department chair, that she could have tested out exams on Steve. As Nancy and I have been together a “mere” 8 _ years, she never met him. ) One evening Steve and I were returning home to my Upper West Side apartment on a packed subway, after seeing a play in the Village. The train stopped dead mid-tunnel, lights went out. We smelled smoke. You could hear a pin drop. Maybe 30 seconds later (it felt like forever), Steve’s voice booms throughout the car, with perfect timing and emphasis - “We really should have had dessert.” Hysterical laughter throughout. Lights back on, subway car moves. I swear to this day that his energy saved us all.
A year or two later, by now I am living in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Again returning home from the theater, we met Rich Paratley (a SHS Class of ‘72 band friend) on the subway, who as it turned out lived around the corner from me. What
a wonderful scene that was. We went home and talked and drank wine until the early hours of the morning. Rich, by the way, plays his flute professionally, and has done so all these years.
In 1988, Steve received a promotion to Grand Central Station Supervisor for Amtrak and moved to New York. I was in Brooklyn (see above), in a great 2 bedroom apartment, and so we decided to become roommates. Steve was ready for a new locale. The move to New York was in April.
That August I returned from a California vacation, to find Steve quite ill, with what we thought (hoped) was the flu. It wasn’t. Through his imminent hospitalization, and the next two months, we learned that Steve had AIDS. He struggled physically and emotionally, and never returned to work, never quite feeling well and sometimes feeling downright awful, but seizing the good days and meeting me for dinner or even a show. This was to be the last 11 months of his life, and I have always thought that somehow the universe brought him to New York so that we could be together, and I could care for him in his last year. This was a terrible time, and I was just depressed and in sufficient enough denial to disbelieve that I was meant to lose him like this, that I was even meant to lose him at all.
AIDS cocktails did not yet exist. The drugs were few; the AIDS-phobia severe. Steve was blessed with his friends Mark and Gary and John. Mark literally slept on the chair next to his hospital bed and created the requisite “Terms of Endearment” nurse’s station scenes when necessary. Gary gave Steve love and the joy of his dog, Woody, who Steve adored. John managed on a daily basis to get Steve engaged in some lunacy during a phone conversation, so that I would return home to our apartment to the sound of Steve’s laughter (you remember that laugh!) on the phone with John. And Tony. Tony was an extra-ordinary man. His relationship with Steve was special, but did not endure. My friendship with Tony, which really developed after Steve’s death, was Steve’s last and final great gift to me. Tony died 3 years later.
Steve became a handsome man, loved by those who knew him, with a great spirit and an irreverence for life. Some of us made an AIDS Memorial Quilt in his memory. Mark, the quilt’s “general manager” and creative consultant, knew that the background had to be bright blue satin, the color and depth of Steve’s eyes. Tony painstakingly sewed a small blue knapsack, a facsimile of the vestige that Steve seemed never to be without. Nora, Steve’s sister, included an old photo of them, as young children. I fashioned a pillow-like heart, with a stanza, within which I drew a rest note.
Steve loved his friends and family, suffered his losses, and never gave up. He loved high school and particularly chorus. I offer this biased biography in his memory. November 23rd would have been his 45th birthday. Happy birthday, Steve. We love you.
