Laurence
E (Larry) Steadman
Services
will be at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at St. Stephen's Episcopal
Church. The Very Rev. Dean Robert Neske will officiate. Private burial
will be Friday at Prairie Union Cemetery in Stella.
Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at All Faiths Funeral Home in Grand
Island.
Mr. Steadman was born June 28, 1937, at Stella to Melvin and Mabel (Howell) Steadman.
Survivors of the immediate family include three sons, Christopher of New Lebanon,
N.Y., Geoffrey of Brighton, Mass., and David of Clinton, N.Y.; and a brother,
Dennis of Lakeland, Tenn.
Other survivors include a granddaughter, Sarah of New Lebanon, N.Y.
Mr. Steadman graduated Valedictorian from Falls City High School in Falls City,
before attending Oberlin College on full scholarship. Returning to Nebraska after
graduation in 1959, he briefly attended the University of Nebraska. After a short
stint with Shell Oil, Larry came on as Marketing Director for Hornady Manufacturing
Co. in Grand Island.
His tenure at Hornady and in Grand Island was filled with creativity. He wrote
the very first Hornady Handbook of Reloading, which was an almost-instant best-seller.
Apart from work, Larry was an active actor, director and board member of the
Grand Island Little Theatre (GILT) and co-founder of a foreign film society,
Cinema 2.
In 1968, Larry was elected to the Grand Island School Board, but resigned to
travel to Boston, to begin his studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Business,
from which he graduated in 1970 with High Distinction. A Baker Scholar at HBS,
he went on to receive his Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard in 1976.
A unique opportunity presented after graduation to work as an Assistant Professor
at the Iran Center for Management Studies in Tehran. He taught corporate finance
and capital markets in this Harvard-affiliated Iranian graduate institution and
helped create and conduct development programs for Iranian and international
managers. He was evacuated from Iran following the first seizure of the U.S.
Embassy in Tehran (1979).
Arriving in Boston, he accepted a position with the Cambridge Research Institute
and in 1981 co-founded Steadman-Coles Management Consultants (S/CI) of Boston
with Ronald F. Coles. S/CI was a general management consulting firm, working
with clients AT&T, Aetna, US West, Motorola, Data General and Fidelity. Laurence
served as president until the company closed in 1995.
Relocating to Cincinnati, Laurence served as Associate Professor of Management
at Thomas More College and also as an adjunct faculty member at Miami and Xavier
universities. An avid reader, cook, and music lover, Larry moved to Chicago in
2003. He was a supporter and member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and an active
(and youngest) member of Chicago's Oldest Men's Book Club.
Mr. Steadman was retired and working on a book, "The Admiral of Hyde Park."
In lieu of flowers, remembrances in his memory can be made to 98.7 WFMT, 5400
N. St. Louis Ave., Chicago, IL 60625-4698; or The Oberlin Alumni Fund, Office
of Development, Bosworth Hall, 50 West Lorain St., Oberlin, OH, 44074; or the
Grand Island Little Theatre Capital Campaign, 3180 W. U.S. Highway 34, Grand
Island, NE, 68801.