Steven Junior Mandic

Steven J. Mandic passed away peacefully during the evening of January 9, 2025, under the kind watch of the hospice care team at Copper Ridge Healthcare who made his final few days as comfortable as possible.

Steve was the fourth child of Sam and Mary (Becky) Mandic, born on June 17, 1940 in Butte, MT. He was a meat cutter by trade and eventually the proprietor (with wife Dorothy and his four kids) of Len’s Foods and D&S Meats in Butte. Steve was drafted into the US Army and served active duty in Anchorage, Alaska, from 1963 to 1965, and continued service in the Reserves until 1969. Steve married Dorothy Moran in 1963 and they began married life together in Anchorage where they started a family and raised four kids: Doug, Stauna, Tony, and Michelle.   

Steve worked two jobs to support his young family in those early days, buying a ramshackle one-bedroom house for $6,500 with a down payment lent by family friends Wayne and Kathleen Lofgren to help them get started. Dorothy also worked as a bookkeeper for Wayne and Kathleen’s furniture store with baby Doug crawling around the showroom, while Steve worked as a butcher and quickly grew to the supervisory ranks of the Bi-Lo grocery chain in Alaska.  Steve and Dorothy later bought that furniture store only to have it consumed by fire (thankfully no-one was hurt) but they picked themselves back up and kept on, displaying the resilience that would define their lives together.

Their relationship with the Lofgren’s faded with time and distance. They, and many other close friends from Alaska, will probably never know how pivotal they were in helping a young family get their footing. Other Anchorage neighbors Harold & Jean Starkey and Ray & Jackie Beakman were close family friends that were there for our family in the early days. They and many others have been an inspiration to help those around us, to pay it forward.

The family moved back to Butte in 1974 to be close to the Moran and Mandic families again.   Steve’s roots are as a butcher, and he and Dorothy rented the meat shop in Len’s Foods from Len and Mona Ericson to start D&S Meats, later buying the grocery store from Len and Mona to continue the family grocery and meat cutting operation until Steve and Dorothy’s retirement in 1995. That store was a cornerstone in our community and created so many close relationships with a wide swath of great people that all helped us to survive and to put four kids through college.

After selling the store and retiring in the 90’s, Steve was famous for his long daily walks in the neighborhood, friends honking and waving from their cars when they’d see him.

Former customer and family friend Zena Beth McLashan was undaunted in forcing Steve to keep making his butcher shop seasoning for family and friends during retirement. His son Doug decided to help Steve commercialize the seasoning via https://www.bigstevies.com/, Amazon, and local retail outlets in Butte to keep Big Steve’s legacy alive. Doug is embarrassed that the web site hasn’t been updated since he created it in 2017. He promises to do better.

Steve is survived by his wife Dorothy, sons Doug and Tony, daughter Stauna, daughter Denise, and Tony’s children Maren and Brady. He was preceded in death by daughter Michelle, brother Frank, and sisters Ann (Lawrence) and Marie (Sullivan). Steve’s remains have been cremated and will be interred at Mountain View cemetery during a small private family ceremony. A celebration of life is being planned for the summer of 2025. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages you to buy a nice cut of meat from your local family-owned butcher shop and grill it in the backyard. It’s what Steve would have wanted.