Steve Pope has died

I’m saddened to have to post that Steve Pope died on Saturday, August 29. For those of you from my professional life, many of you will have known Steve.

I met Steve around 1980 when I joined Multiple Technologies Corporation. Steve and I were both recruiters there, we were both the same age, and we had both grown up in the Detroit Metro area - he in Berkley, and me in Detroit. Beyond that, we couldn’t have been more different. 

Steve wore Brooks Brothers suits, wing tip shoes, button down white Oxford cloth shirts, and, when he was being casual, he wore designer jeans, always ironed, and strange pull over shirts with alligators on them. Steve was all preppy. He was also a republican, a fundamental Christian, and had a degree. He was good at sports, loved going to games, and was incredibly competitive.

Suffice it to say that I was pretty much the opposite of all of that. But we developed a friendship that lasted these past 40 years, and a respect for one another that allowed us to get beyond most of the issues that might have torn us apart. Hell, I even got him to go to Men’s Group meetings for almost a year!

Steve died from colorectal cancer, a disease he had only recently had diagnosed. When he got diagnosed he told me he had joined another of our joint “groups.” He had started a regimen of Folfox, but only made it through 3 or 4 cycles, and his heart and body just gave out.

I don’t know yet what Steve’s family will be doing in remembrance of him. Starr and Linda have said there will be a memorial at Kensington on September 12, but I don’t have details on that yet. But I wanted to post this to let Steve’s professional family know of his passing. This is for those people that knew him from MTC, Computer Dynamics, CDI, Artemis, or Modern Engineering.

John Hoppes, Mark Mustola, Kerri Teachout Mustola, John D’Agostino, Tony Vitale, Natalie Race Smith, Barb Casey Howard, and any of the rest of you that can help spread the news, please do so. Steve was a part of our IT consulting and recruiting community for his entire career. We should mourn his passing. I know I do.

I don't have contact info for a number of people, so if any of you can reach out to Paul Semian, Doug Z, Jeff Diegel, Bill Phillips or a host of others, I would be grateful.