Obituary of James Stephen Turner

Steve Turner died last Sunday evening after a battle with heart disease and cancer. He was with his family at home and his passing was peaceful. Steve was a freelance journalist and novelist whose work appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News, and various regional publications in New England. His book, Amber Waves and Undertow, about rural decline in Washington State, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2010. Drylands, a Rural American Saga, a joint project with photographer Lionel Delevingne, was published by the University of Nebraska Press last Fall. His novel about the importation of Chinese workers from San Francisco to North Adams, Massachusetts to break a strike by shoemakers is forthcoming. Born in 1937, Steve grew up in Garrett Park, Maryland and after high school graduation joined his diplomat parents in Baghdad, Iraq for a year before entering Middlebury College in Vermont. He graduated in 1959 and was commissioned a lieutenant in the United State Army. While learning Mandarin Chinese at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey he met and married his wife of fifty one years, Anne. Turner resigned his commission in 1964 and entered graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Master of Arts degree. He spent nearly ten years as a community organizer and anti-poverty program executive. In 1975 he fulfilled a lifelong dream by becoming a full time writer, concentrating on labor and environmental issues. He was a founding member of the National Writers Union, and helped hundreds of members with contract advice and grievances against publishers. He is survived by his wife, Anne M. Turner, his son Nicholas, his brother Terence S. Turner, his sister Allison K. Turner, two nieces and several grandchildren. His ashes will be distributed during the annual family gathering next October in Leicester, Vermont.