William Clinton Steele

Clint was born on September 1, 1950, in Kansas City, Missouri, then adopted by William Herbert Steele and Hilah Moss Steele of Paris, IL. Clint grew up in Paris, where he participated in various swim meets around the state for several years.

In high school, he acted as the manager for the Paris Tigers basketball team and did lifeguarding in the summers at the local swim club, where he met his high school sweetheart, Judy Jordan, who had moved into town prior to his senior year.

Clint went on to college at Indiana State in Terre Haute, IN, where he went from a Math major with Physical Education minor, to what would be his life’s pursuit of Geology, thanks to an encouraging professor, Tracy Vallier. Clint proposed to Judy at her 1970 Christmas dance at the University of Illinois and they were married on September 1, 1971, in Paris, IL.

After Clint’s graduation from Indiana State in May of 1972, he received a fellowship to do his graduate studies at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Pulling a small trailer behind their Chevy Impala, Clint and Judy drove cross country to the Bay Area , eventually moving into the married housing at Stanford where they enjoyed making new friends and becoming proficient in the local courtyard volleyball games. Clint received his Doctorate at Stanford, graduating with honors on June 17, 1979, then went to work full-time at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA where he had previously interned.

Clint started his career in the Alaskan branch which gave him the opportunity to do field work in the mountains of Alaska. However, after a few years he switched over to the Coastal & Marine Geology branch. There he and his team produced a “pioneering marine database called Infobank to document the large volume of Coastal and Marine Geology geophysical data and sample collections as they were brought ashore. Thanks to the efforts of Clint and his team, that team is “perhaps the most successful in the whole USGS at preserving valuable data and samples for future use.” And although the Survey now uses an updated version, some of Clint’s former colleagues still refer to the original off-line copy of Infobank for data tidbits that can no longer be found anywhere else”.

In his “spare” time at the Survey, Clint helped organize grass volleyball games during lunchtimes, helped his assistant, Carolyn, collect weird postcards from all their travels and generally collected and kept an amazing amount of trivia in his head. He was both meticulous, good-natured and helpful to other colleagues. Clint was also considered to be enthusiastic and contributed innovative ideas to the annual Survey open houses and other outreach events, especially remembered for his team’s “Dress Like a Marine Geologist!” activities that introduced countless children and their families to the science of Geology. He was greatly missed but not forgotten when he retired in 2011.

When Clint and Judy left Stanford, they moved around the Peninsula a few times until they discovered Foster City and its lagoons. During their 40+ years there, Clint played and taught volleyball 2-3 nights a week through the local Rec Center, retiring from that job just as Covid hit. They both also participated in their local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) for over 10 years.

Clint’s Aunt Margaret introduced him and Judy to European travel, starting in 1983 with the Glacier Express tour around Switzerland and later including such places as Venice, Italy, Vienna, Austria, Frankfurt, Germany, and so on. Clint and Judy later did several tours on their own, to France, Bavaria and Czechoslovakia. In addition to their varied land tours, Clint and Judy started cruising – to the Bahamas, then a leaf-peeping tour of New England and Canada, with several trips each to Hawaii and Alaska. In between their long-distance travels, Clint and Judy loved to hike at Lake Tahoe, in Yosemite National Park and along the California coast, with Clint talking about the local Geology as they went. They also enjoyed playing cards, dominos, Mah Jongg, and other games with each other and their friends.

Clint is survived by his wife, Judy Steele, sister-in-law Debra Gosse, brother-in-law Richard Gosse, sister-in-law Lynda Sudduth, nephew, Jason Sudduth and niece Holly Sudduth. There are no immediate plans for a memorial service.