DODGE CITY - Donald Theodore Steele closed his final act May 24, 2024 in Dodge City, Kansas. He was born June 29,1948 in Dodge City, Kansas to Wilbur G. and Irene I. (Rankin) Steele in Dodge City, Kansas.

Two sentences. Where he was born. Where he passed. As a lifelong believer that brevity was the essence of wit, that few things warranted an eye roll more than overwrought prose, and that being the center of attention and focus of praise should always be shunned - Don would hate this story.

How do you quantify the impact that Don Steele had on the people who knew him? How do you tell the story of the students who were taught and inspired by him? The friends who shared his table? How do you describe the impact of a single life on thousands of people who passed through the doors of the theater, attended a variety show, read his articles, sang to his accompaniment. What words can convey the legacy of performing arts that fundamentally changed the creative lives of thousands in Southwest Kansas?

To know Don was to know his stories. Now it is our turn to tell Don's story.

A native of Jetmore, Don graduated Jetmore High School 1966 and attended Wichita State University where he majored in music theater and graduated in 1971.

He attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where he worked extensively with the theater department, editing music for productions, conducting musicals, and composing original music.

He joined the Philadelphia Company, a not-for-profit theater dedicated to fostering emerging playwrights and musical creators. For the Company, he served as coordinator of the student performance program. He also created three shows for the Company: "Start To Finish," a revue based on the lyrics of Dorothy Fields; "Some of My Best Friends Are Women," a revue featuring songs about women by various writers; and "Dementia '79," a revue featuring songs from the Doctor Demento radio show.

Don's first professional jobs were as a pit musician for productions of "No, No, Nanette," and "A Little Night Music" in Sydney, Australia. He toured the U.S. and Canada on the Community Concert circuit as an accompanist for Songs By Six, a Robert De Cormier vocal group.

Don taught music at Green Valley High School and Barrenjoey High Schools in Sydney, and Keith Valley Middle School in Philadelphia.

He served as music director/conductor for three seasons for the show "I Hear America Singing" at Opryland in Nashville.

Don returned home to Jetmore to write and direct the city's centennial celebration.

In 1982, Don became director of The Long Branch Variety Show at Boot Hill Museum and subsequently founded the Boot Hill Repertory Company (later The Depot Theater Company). During Don's tenure, the Company completed the $14 million campaign to restore the Santa Fe Depot and create a new performance space for the Company. Don penned numerous original songs and revues including "When You're In Dodge City," and his own arrangement of "Home on the Range."  Don retired after 25 years as the theater company founder, administrator, and director.

After retiring from the Company in 2008, Don worked as a features and culture reporter for the Dodge City Daily Globe, where he told the stories of those living in Southwest Kansas with compassion and deftness. Not one to stay still, after leaving the Daily Globe in 2013, he remained involved with the performing arts, volunteering his time as an accompanist for students across Southwest Kansas, continuing to mentor performers and directors at the Depot Theater, while extensively traveling the world exploring its unique cultural and culinary offerings.

Don was a man of many contradictions. Larger than life, yet content to sit in the back as others took center stage. Focused enough on perfection to angrily send an entire cast home for their failure to memorize their lines, while kind enough to welcome the misfits and vagabonds of performing arts as they were. Equal parts inspiring and frustrating. Demanding and understanding. Don was a storyteller, a musician. A chef, a gourmand. A friend. A partner. So many things to too many people to be fully embodied in such few words.

Don freely gave of his creative gifts across the globe, the United States, southwest Kansas. His dedication to establishing, growing, and fostering the performing arts brought a level of artistry and entertainment to our small corner of the world just as compelling and impactful as anything in any major city.

While telling stories of Don to his friends, his nephew Tedd Steele was asked "Is theater big in Dodge City?"

Tedd responded, "Not until my uncle got there."

Don was preceded in death by his mother, his father, and his brother Kim Steele.

Left with decades of fond memories and love are his partner Darleen Clifton-Smith and nephew Tedd Steele.

Those missing him include dozens of friends, colleagues, loved ones and hundreds of those he influenced over the course of his life.

The American existential psychiatrist Irvin Yalom once wrote "Someday soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory."

The fingerprint Don left on the lives of everyone he touched - and on the cultural landscape he strove to bring to the dust-whipped plains of western Kansas - defies Yalom's myopic worldview. A life lived as Don lived reverberates. The lives he touched and inspired pay dividends generations down the line, even if those may not readily know his name.

While the world is so much dimmer now that he has left us, it's forever brighter because he was here.

A celebration of life will be held at a later date during the Depot Theater Company's 40th Anniversary Celebration in July.  There will be no public viewing, cremation has taken place.

The family suggests memorials to the Donald Steele Memorial Fund to benefit the Depot Theater in care of Ziegler Funeral Chapel, 1901 N. 14th Ave., Dodge City, Kansas 67801.