The Howler - July/August 2006

We’re Howling about:
STEVE CIEPIELA, ’77 BA, ’79 MPA
by Mary Conrad

“Work hard. Have fun. Give back.”

Maybe we don’t need to write any more about Steve Ciepiela, ’77 BA, ’79 MPA (pictured above with Lobos Lucy & Louie), since he already summed up the theme of his life story with these words.

Those who know him — and know about his 20 years of volunteering with the UNM Alumni Association — would agree.

The South Side

Working hard comes naturally to Steve. “My mom worked from age 16 to 67,” says Steve about the woman who raised him single-handedly in a “blue-collar, Irish Catholic, union neighborhood” on Chicago’s South Side. Thinking he “needed discipline,” she enrolled him in Mount Carmel, an all-male Catholic high school. Its motto is “building character for a lifetime.”

It was a fateful decision. Without it, we’d have no story at all. Life would have led Steve elsewhere.

However, as fate had it, former Lobo gridiron standout Chuck Kelly, ’65 BSHP, had become head football coach at Mount Carmel. He let Steve know the lay of the land. “I was cocky because I’d had some success at football,” Steve says. “Kelly told me to stop hanging around with those kids on 51st street, and start hanging around with the kids on the team. ‘You do what I tell you, you’ll play in college,’ he said.”

High school behind him, Steve began studies at the Air Force Academy. He left there after a year wrestling with engineering, required of those who wanted to fly. Uncertain where his future lay, he returned to the south side to drive a forklift for the Teamsters Longshoremen. That was when he got the call from UNM.

The Southwest

Lobo Coach Rudy Feldman, knowing the Kelly connection, called Steve on August 11, 1973, and said, “If you’re here August 15, we’ll give you a full scholarship to play football.”

“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Steve says. So he moved to New Mexico—“a totally different culture and environment. People either like the lifestyle or they don’t. I did.”

BA under his belt, Steve landed his first job out of college as a juvenile probation officer. And he fell in love with Marian, who worked at the DA’s office.

“It was love at first sight,” says Steve. “I still remember what she was wearing.” Thirty years and three kids later, the couple continue to be a team.

“People say you make luck,” Steve reflects. “I think it comes to you. I’ve been lucky. I understand that. I don’t take it for granted.”

Success

Steve pursued business courses as part of his master’s work in public administration. Smitten by pensions, he left his government job for financial services at Resources Financial. There Steve met Charles Severino, who, three years later, would become his business partner in Charles Stephen and Company. The company specializes in retirement and retirement income planning.

In 2004, Chuck died suddenly, at age 48, of a cerebral aneurism. The personal devastation felt by Steve and his staff was abated only by the professional security that came of Steve and Chuck’s business foresight. The duo had set up a stock redemption agreement that would protect each partner’s family and the business in the event of either’s death.

“My life would be totally different if we hadn’t been prepared,” Steve says. “I might have had to sell the company.

“Everybody knows somebody this has happened to,” he continues, “but it’s amazing how many aren’t set up for it.” In the two years since Chuck’s death, Steve has given talks and been published nationally about preparing for such a catastrophe.

Surprise

The unexpected plays a brighter role for Steve. In a way, his life is surprising, “Where I grew up, I never envisioned I’d be living where I live, how I live. Most of my aunts and uncles never went to college. My relatives were steam fitters, firemen, cops.”

Then again, Steve often surprises others: his interests in art, classical music, and reading sometimes belie his early background and his “jock” semblance. Currently immersed in a Twain biography, he admits, “I read to the point of rudeness.”

Nor does community involvement come as a surprise to Steve, who says about his countless hours of volunteer work, “Somebody told me to make the place you live a better place to live.”

On the board of Roadrunner Food Bank, active in the Newman Center, past president of the UNM Alumni Lettermen and the UNM Alumni Association, involved with his kids’ schools, and president of his neighborhood association, Steve makes Albuquerque a better place to live.

Work hard. Have fun. Give back. Steve Ciepiela.