Hi. I'm Peter Keane. I knew Steve in several respects, not the least of which was as a neighbor. Nancy and I lived a block from Steve for the last forty years, more than that,* and knew Rachel and Jean very well. In addition to the fact that I was one of those members of that little village called the Hall of Justice, back in the 1970s as a criminal defense attorney, where we had a number of very remarkable characters, characters like Bob Berman, who somebody knows around here, really brilliant people involved in some basic things, helping out the most vulnerable people in society. There was this one guy who was kind of like Yoda. Wandered through that. And that was Steve. He was the wise man of there. Everyone was talking about the fact that he had mentored so many people. When I was chief assistant public defender I can't remember how many times someone would have a question and it was "Well, why don't you run it by Steve Scherr." And how many times I did run it by Steve Scherr. People have talked about the experience with Steve of our being on the receiving end of our having weaker intellects than he did. I remember one time quite vividly when I used him as an expert witness, I can't recall the case at all, but I used him as an expert witness and in terms of talking to him and briefing about it, I never felt more inadequate in my life than him telling me that everything that I was doing was absolute nonsense. And it was true! It turned out, everything that he did tell me to do turned out to be correct. I had this feeling about this guy that he could peer into your very soul and tell you things that pissed you off at the time, really hurt you badly, but it would be something that you would benefit from enormously.
That we got. I can't match the stuff that Jim and the others from Webster Street all talked about. So let me give you the perspective of Steve as a neighbor. Nancy and I lived a block away from Steve out there on Cabrillo Street; I live on 15th, Steve lived over on 17th, for forty years or so. Rachel - one of the things that you really know about someone who has really accomplished something is in terms of what it is that has come about with their children. We first met Rachel when she was about ten or eleven, and she became the babysitter for our two daughters, Heather and Lauren. They absolutely to this day adore her. She became their role model, why they did everything, Lauren went to Lowell High School mainly because Rachel went to Lowell High School. Everything about Rachel, you can see she got from Steve even though she's very different from Steve, has a different side to her. The wedding that was talked about, the wonderful wedding of Dale and Rachel, my daughters were just tiny at the time but they were the flower girls. They had this wonderful time walking in front of Rachel and tossing petals up in the air. [Rachel: Into people's faces!] And into people's faces. They never had so much fun in their life. That memory is with them to this day. They are married and have kids of their own but that memory is with them to this day. They can't be here today, it's one of the great sadnesses for them, that they can't be here today.
We would know Steve and we would know Jean. In our neighborhood there is a school that has a thing called the Community Garden, and Jean had a community garden. Jean was an absolute passionate gardener, just like my wife Nancy. Jean had a plot up there in the community garden and she took care of it. We would see Jean all the time, Steve would go up and pick Jean up and walk back with her after she had done her gardening. There was Steve, maybe in the corduroy suit or maybe something perhaps equally rumpled, and Jean in her gardening outfit, and the two of them just as was talked about before, Rachel and Steve walking together and the balloon going up in the air, I'd watch, I don't know how many times I'd watch the two of them going down Cabrillo Street to their house, Steve having come from court, still in his lawyer's uniform, Jean in her grubbies and her boots and her gardening hat and her old rumpled outfit, and the two of them just with their heads together, communing like two beautiful souls, which they were. Just as was described by Rachel earlier. Very extraordinary type of man, and family, as with all these other things that we've talked about.
When Steve retired, many of you who went to lunch with him probably lost touch with him. I would see him virtually every day, because I would come out, I would be going off to work, and Steve would be walking by and he would be going up to the Academy of Sciences. That's where he hung out. He was up there doing his thing, I'm sure regaling anybody who had any kind of question about science. We would stop and we would talk. He missed Jean terribly, you could see that, he would go off to where she was interred and visit her.** I would ask about Rachel, he would ask about my daughters, and ask me what I was doing. And then he would wander off down to the Academy of Science.
Remarkable presence, this guy. There's a vacuum in all of us today. There's a vacuum out there in that neighborhood, out there in the Richmond District, in terms of Steve is not going to be taking that path along Cabrillo Street and heading off to the Academy of Science. There's a vacuum in my heart, and my wife's, and my daughters', and in all of us. An amazing character. I can't think of anyone who could fill that set of roles that we've laid out today. Just a remarkable guy. We're so lucky to have known him.
** Dad was probably heading to Mom's bench in Golden Gate Park.
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