From Connie:

 

Steve and I both grew up in Monroe, a small town in Wisconsin. We first met in our high school chorus class. I was there because I love to sing; Steve on the other hand wanted an easy class he could take with some friends. He was seated behind me and much to my surprise, he had a very nice voice. We started dating shortly after that and got married December 17, 1977. What made our ceremony extra special was that Steve sang me a beautiful love song.

 

The highlight of Steve’s life was his two daughters, Ella and Ramie. He was a true “Girl Dad”. He was so proud of them and was always eager to share stories about them and their accomplishments. From the beginning to the very end, they always knew they could go to him with anything. He wanted most for them to be strong women who are kind, honest, curious, happy people that add some value to this world. His love for them was immense!

 

Steve was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer late 2017. He began various treatments and managed them pretty well, but unfortunately due to a rare mutation nothing was working. We knew that going forward there would be few options. In 2020, his condition worsened and he was offered two promising trials but again disappointment came his way. As difficult as the last months of this journey has been, we could have never gotten through it without our girls being here, our faith, and the love and support of family and friends.

 

Steve and I fortunately shared many of the same interest and values. I like to think we complemented each other well. Here are a few of the many things I loved and admired most about Steve:

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• He was very humble, always looking to give credit where credit was due. He wanted to lift those around him up and offer opportunities for personal and professional growth. He truly believed it takes a whole team, not one player, to get things done and done well.

• He not only loved the three of us but both of our families and all our wonderful friends as well. He was a truly great listener and really cared deeply about what people had to say. His wisdom and advice were often requested which he then offered thoughtfully and lovingly.

• Oh, how he loved to learn! The girls and I would ask him so many random questions. We were always amazed that he very seldom did not know the answer. We would say, How do you know all this stuff?

• His love for music, all music. He played the electric base and guitar, acoustic guitar and even the pedal steel guitar for a while. Steve had a blast playing in bands all through high school and college. Later in life, he turned his attention to music theory and playing for his family and friends. To this day we have friends that still call themselves his groupies!

• His crazy quirky personality and amazing laugh – when you heard it you could not help but laugh yourself and just feel his joy!

• The way Steve always encouraged me in my passion to work with the under-resourced community in Charlotte. We both deeply believed that the numerous blessings our family has been given needed to be shared with others. The blessing are not ours to keep, he would say.

• Last but certainly not least – all things Wisconsin! His love for his Alma Mater UW-Madison, the Badgers and Packers. They all gave him and us so much pleasure (and a bit of frustration) over his entire lifetime.

 

Before Steve passed he was blessed with so many heart-felt notes and messages from family and friends; they touched him deeply. A part of one of those notes summed them all up well: “You’re a good man Steve Ott! You have touched and impacted so many lives. You demonstrate integrity, honesty and fairness – qualities we don’t see much anymore. You are incredibly smart and you’re a wonderful husband and father. You are a good listener and are thoughtful… you think through things before you respond. You’re highly respected. Your life has been well lived. Soon, you will be hearing, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.’”

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Steve was my best friend, constant companion and love of my life. Right now living without him seems unimaginable. Yet I will do my best to honor him and my love for him by singing solo.

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From Ella:

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My dad and I are and always have been two of a kind, a pair, one another’s mirror image; if he is the right then I am the left. When I am little, my family takes a quiz printed in the Sunday paper that defines your relationship toward another person based on the first color that comes to mind when you think of them. Separately, my dad and I both name the color white as the one that most reminds us of one another, and according to the quiz, that means we’re soul mates. It's silly and baseless and I don’t remember any of the results aside from that one, but for whatever reason, the color white sticks in my mind, as does the implication that we are two beings whose souls are linked. I think the term match is more apt though - we are soul matches, he and I. I have him for twenty-nine years, one month and seven days and no matter how long it was, it never would have been enough.

 

I’ve always found the term losing a loved one to be a funny one. How exactly do we lose them? Where along the way are they misplaced? Do they fall from our pockets or slip out of our unzipped bags? Do we drop them somewhere, one of a pair, like a single mitten on the sidewalk? Were we careless perhaps? And if they are merely lost, can they be found again? I lose my dad in the middle of winter on the warmest day of the year which is still new, and that day I feel as though my soul might spend the rest of its days rummaging around for its other half - tearing through drawers, retracing steps, muttering to itself that perhaps he will just turn up. Perhaps if I just stopped looking.

 

One day near the end when things are bad but not as bad as they will be, in a rare moment my dad and I are alone together, he tells me that after his own mother passed, he felt her presence - it’s the kind of thing people say that I never quite believe but if my dad says it, it must be true. He describes the feeling as a hummingbird hovering close to his face, its tiny wings moving four thousand times a minute, and then buzzing away again just as quickly as it came. When I ask if he’ll do the same for me he says he’ll try but that he can’t promise anything. Even then I know that I’ll be searching for him once he’s gone, starting in all the usual places - out in the ether amongst the stars or down at the bottom of the ocean or halfway across the world, somewhere we always talked about visiting - Tokyo, perhaps, or New Zealand. And if I don’t find him there, I’ll move on to less conspicuous places - in the bass notes of an Allman Brothers song, in the sediment at the bottom of my wine glass, in the spaces between the lines of something I’m writing that reminds me of him.

 

I suppose that more than likely he’ll turn up in the place he always said he’d be - waiting for me at the top of the highest hill on Liberty Grove Church Road where we used to bike, catching his breath, taking it all in. The hot July sun is shining down on us but I can see dark clouds in the distance; it’ll storm later like it often does in summer. He looks at me and says, Remember me like this, Ella. And I tell him I will even though I’d rather not have to remember him. I’d rather just keep on riding and pretending like it will all last forever - these soft and fragile bodies; these impermanent seasons in our lives, some of them idylls we can’t even recognize until it starts to rain; things that come and go like weather. When we take off on our descent, I’m cautious, always slower than him on the way down but not lost, never lost, and neither is he; I keep my eyes fixed on him as he races further and further ahead of me until I can no longer see him at all. I’ll keep winding my way down past Christmas tree farms on hilltops; past long, yellowing yards with dogs that run their length, barking at us as we roll by; beside a slow, bending river; all the way to where he waits for me at the bottom. The road is long and we are together for a good part of it - perhaps not most of it but for a good, long while - until we aren’t anymore.

 

Because I must, this is what I’ll remember - not everything but a few things:

 

How much he appreciated a good landscape - everything from the silo-lined country roads near where he grew up in Wisconsin to the rolling rural hills of Ashe County to the American West, Switzerland, Scotland. He looked at all these and really appreciated the beauty in them. 

 

How when I lived in New York City, he visited several times and we always tried to see live jazz at iconic venues like the Blue Note and the Village Vanguard. He would tap me on the shoulder and tell me to isolate a single instrument as I listened. Do you hear the bass, Ella? he’d say. Or, Listen to the drummer - he’s got real talent. He heard music like a musician and taught me to do the same.

 

How he was always learning which made him the best kind of teacher. When I was nine or ten, my dad took an interest in French language and culture which for most people might become a casual hobby. For my dad though, it became an obsession. He taught himself to speak French and I learned alongside him; I was a very willing student unlike my sister, and we spent hours in the evenings conjugating verbs and watching French language courses on television. We travelled to France annually for a number of years and those experiences - the places we saw, the people we met, the food, culture, art and history - were very formative ones for me.

 

How besides French, he was always learning about wine, another interest we shared. He taught me how to taste and what to pair with certain kinds of food (red sauce? Chianti Classico; spicy food? Zinfandel; when in doubt? Champagne). For him it was more than just drinking it - it was the regions, the grape varietals, the history. And of course he taught me some very practical things too - how to invest, for example, and how to budget, and to always, always, pay off your credit card balance in full if you can (enough said). In the rare case that he didn’t know something, we’d always look it up. I remember one night we spent hours learning about constellations, climate, and angles of measure on earth, all because neither of us knew why the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn were so-named.

 

How he watched movies. We could talk about movies for days after seeing them - analyzing their meaning, rehashing certain scenes, connecting everything back to a theme. He could do the same with song lyrics too, breaking them down like poetry. He wasn’t much of a reader of fiction, but he had the mind of a literary critic in this way and I always admired that. Each year at Christmastime we’d watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and he’d pull out some detail he’d never noticed before, something small but meaningful. The detail I’ll most cherish from that movie is the sign George Bailey sees as a boy that reads, Ask Dad, he knows - because he always did.

 

How much time we had together over the past several months even as time was waning and we knew it - how we would sit on the sofa on Sunday mornings, me typing away on my laptop and him practicing a new song on the acoustic guitar, both of us pursuing our separate passions. How he learned Taylor Swift at my request and Kacey Musgraves too. How we sat at the kitchen table and talked about everything (really - everything). How we did crossword puzzles and watched Jeopardy, each of us a bit competitive with one another. How in the end he told me not to be so hard on myself, because perhaps at times he was too hard on himself and he saw that in me.

 

Because I am, after all, his match. Losing my dad is a heart-breaking, soul-tearing thing - so I’d like to think that he’s not really lost. He’s just waiting for me to catch up.

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From Ramie:

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Words cannot describe how much I will miss my Dad. He has always been the person I admire most, my biggest supporter, and my go-to for everything.

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He was kind, patient, and caring. He was always making a positive impact on the people around him and he truly was a role model. When I thought about introducing anyone to my family, I was always most excited to introduce them to my Dad. I truly thought the world of him.

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There are so many things about my Dad that I will miss:

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Traveling: We traveled a lot as a family growing up but one of my all-time favorite trips was when he took me to Europe with him on a work trip after I graduated college. We went to Barcelona, Lyon, Milan, and Rome. I will never forget walking through the markets of Barcelona, having dinner with work colleagues in Lyon at a small restaurant in the back garden, seeing the Duomo in Milan, and eating so much pasta and gelato in Rome.

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Hearing Him Play his Guitar and Bass: My Dad would always crank up music and play while my mom, sister, and I would dance. I like to remember the four of us like that – Dad in his element and the rest of us cheering him on.

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Bike Riding and Ski Trips: I remember going on bike rides in Todd beside the river and our annual trips to Steamboat Springs to ski. That was my Dad’s happy place – doing what he loved with the people he loved.

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Watching Badger and Packer Games: I will always remember going to Lambeau Field as a family to watch the Packers play. We were sitting in the freezing cold, drinking beer, and cheering our team on. My Dad always talked about how at the end of the game I looked at him and said, “Can we stay forever?” I was born and bred to root for green and gold I guess. Whenever he watched Badger basketball, he could always count on me to be there watching it with him.

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Luce Nights: We always had the best experiences at Luce, our favorite Italian restaurant in Charlotte. My Dad regularly went there for work lunches and got to know the owner and the staff well; when we ate there as a family (it was our go-to for any special occasion), they would greet us with prosecco and bring us complimentary tiramisu for dessert and generally make us all feel special because my Dad was special to them. Those nights were always memorable, filled with great wine and even better conversation.

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Thanksgiving: My Dad and I share the same favorite holiday – Thanksgiving. For many years, we celebrated with our family friends- the Willemstein’s. I remember my Dad carving the turkey in our mountain house in Todd and enjoying his favorite dessert, his mom’s pumpkin pie. I look back on those times as ones filled with lots of wine and lots of laughter.

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Euchre: Our favorite game to play as a family was Euchre and my Dad and I would always team up (and always win). We would turn on AC/DC to celebrate our victory and go crazy in front of my mom and sister. It was a blast.

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Mostly though, I think I’ll miss his big, infectious laugh, his steadfast love and his constant, unwavering support. He was a calm, reliable sounding board and safety net for me throughout my entire life. I’ve grown so much with his guidance and I’m thankful that he was able to walk alongside me, helping me get to the place I am today. As I move forward without him by my side, I want to continue on my path to become someone of whom my Dad would be truly proud.

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It has been a long road watching him battle cancer and it has truly hurt witnessing him go through so much, but he was so strong through it all. In my Dad’s final days he called my name and told me to come give him a hug. As he embraced me, he asked, “Ramie- are you going to be okay?” I looked at him with tears in my eyes and said, “No probably not – but I will be for you.” So- I will do my best to be okay for him, but not a day will go by that I won’t think of him or miss him.

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Dad – Thank you for being the best “girl dad” Ella and I could have ever asked for. I love you dearly.