Scott Peoples remembers watching “I Love Lucy” reruns with his grandparents, Don and Wendy Stevens.
“Grandma and Grandpa were exactly like Ricky and Lucy,” Peoples said.
Peoples’ grandfather, former MSU Trustee Don Stevens, died Friday. He was 87.
Friends and family gathered Tuesday morning to pay their final respects at a funeral Mass at St. John’s Student Parish, 327 M.A.C. Ave.
“I consider Grandpa a friend,” Peoples said during the Mass.
Stevens, an MSU trustee from 1958-78 and chairperson of the board from 1968-70, was instrumental in the hiring of Clifton Wharton, MSU’s first black president.
The 1969 search was between two candidates - Wharton and former Gov. G. Mennen Williams. Despite close personal and professional ties to Williams, Stevens followed the advice of a faculty and student search committee and voted to hire Wharton.
The decision to hire Wharton led Stevens to resign from his job of 23 years with the Michigan AFL-CIO.
“He was first and foremost and always a union man,” Wharton said during the eulogy.
Wharton said Stevens supported the unions, even during a strike by a campus labor organization.
“We had to move the (Board of Trustees) meeting off campus because Don refused to cross the picket line,” he said.
Wharton said Stevens often would bring newspaper clippings to board meetings, protesting MSU’s investment in nonunion lettuce and encouraging other officials to cut off university investment in companies that did business with then-segregated South Africa.
“Don had causes galore,” Wharton said. “We all are the better for such a wonderful man.”
Daughter Sylvia Stevens-Berenson remembers her father’s fights very well.
“There was a certain substance about him based on the convictions he had,” she said. “You didn’t want to be on the other side of him.”
But her father also was a gentle, humble man.
“My father was a man who loved people,” she said.
Sue Carter, secretary to the Board of Trustees and executive assistant to MSU President M. Peter McPherson, said Stevens’ love of people was obvious, even to students.
Carter, who attended the Mass, was a freshman at MSU in the fall of 1968, when Stevens became chairperson of the board.
“He was always very gracious with students and willing to listen to us and our concerns during a time that was extraordinarily turbulent,” Carter said. “He was never afraid to engage students.”
Throughout those turbulent times, Stevens kept a cool head, Carter said.
“He gave leadership during a very hard time,” she said. “The process by which he came to reason was an example to us all.”
