Steven Brun Caldwell

Steven Brun Caldwell died on June 9, 2025, surrounded by loving family. His exuberant, expansive spirit will be remembered with joy and gratitude by his many family members and friends.

Steve was born in New Rochelle, New York, on March 2, 1942, to Betty Brun Caldwell and Richard Laverne Caldwell. He spent his childhood in the small town of Defreestville in a house surrounded by farmland, catching snakes and crawdads with his younger siblings Rocky Caldwell and Lisa (Caldwell) Teliska in the creek that ran through the property. Steve's maternal grandparents were part of a wave of Danish immigrants arriving in the Albany area in the late 1800's, and Steve remained proud of his Danish heritage, visiting Denmark with his children and a grandchild to meet relatives on several occasions. Steve's father, Richard Caldwell, was the first member of his family to graduate from college, and he served in the US Army in Alaska during World War II. His mother Betty taught high-school business classes and encouraged Steve to excel in all arenas.

In high school, Steve was captain of both his basketball and baseball teams. He never stopped reminiscing with his dear friend and fellow teammate Paul Visconti - with whom he stayed in touch for nearly seven decades following high school - about the year his basketball team won the league title. Steve was salutatorian of his graduating class, and in 1959, at age 17, was featured on the cover of the Saturday Review for successfully growing salt crystals on a hot dog at a summer science program for outstanding students.

Steve went on to graduate from Dartmouth in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. After college, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in Benares, India. This experience proved to be one of the highlights of his life, igniting a lifelong passion to combat poverty and income inequality, and transforming Steve the clean-cut athlete into a long-haired intellectual with an intense yearning for social change. Upon his return to the US, Steve completed a PhD at Cornell University in quantitative sociology.

Steve's career began at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, where he worked to develop public policies with the potential to create a broader social safety net. In the early 70s, Steve joined the Department of Sociology at Cornell University as a professor and taught there until his retirement in 2006. In addition to teaching, Steve developed demographic microsimulation models that were adopted by the Social Security Administration to improve their projection of cost benefits over time. He was fascinated by demographic change and how it impacts government policies. Steve was a lifelong Democrat and social welfare state enthusiast and a staunch critic of entrenched intergenerational wealth and other systems of income inequality. He had a passion for hardboiled detective writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, which led to him teaching a freshman seminar at Cornell on detective fiction.

Steve married Martha Potter Wardner in West Hartford, CT, in 1966. Together they shared a love of fishing, hiking, and camping in the pristine Adirondacks wilderness. After that marriage ended in divorce, he married Bickley Townsend Smith in Ithaca, NY in 1974, and spent many idyllic years living with her in Brooktondale, Ithaca, and Manhattan. He adored his three children, Kemlo Aki, of Weare, New Hampshire; Heather Urquhart, of Lisbon, Portugal; and Benjamin Caldwell, of San Francisco, CA; and stepdaughter Shannon Dodge, also of San Francisco.

Highlights of his time spent with his children included seeing Kemlo graduate from her Master's program, driving shotgun with Ben and beloved dog Josie across the country at the age of 78, and "zonking out" out in numerous bookstores from Barcelona to Berkeley with Heather and Shannon.

Steve was cherished for his frankness, wisdom, love of life and sense of humor by his eight grandchildren: Levi Caldwell (4), Elliot Caldwell (6), Zeb Urquhart (15), Silas McCaustland (15), Elias Urquhart (18), Jake Aki (29), Megan Aki (32), and Helen Aki (35). He took his three eldest grandchildren on one-on-one trips to celebrate milestone graduations - Helen to Denmark, Meg to Slovenia, and Jake to London, where he relished getting to know them as young adults. Equally important to him were his grandnieces Ivy (15) and Olive (13) Hardenbergh; as well as his nieces Holly Teliska and Sydnee Caldwell, also of San Francisco; Liza Caldwell of Boise, Idaho; and nephew Grayson Caldwell of Los Angeles.

Following the dissolution of his second marriage, Steve moved to San Francisco to be closer to family. In his final years, though diagnosed with dementia, he enjoyed and benefited from the company of fellow residents at Rhoda Goldman Plaza assisted living and the dedicated care of its staff. It provided a warm and caring environment for family and friends to spend time with him.

Steve was a brilliant student and teacher, a wonderful father and loving husband, and a dear friend to many who will miss him. Steve will be remembered for his radically vibrant spirit and his passionate enthusiasm for ideas, people, cities, politics, literature, quirkiness, film, animals and music. His was a lifetime of soulful connection to the real world.

If you are looking for a way to honor Steve, please consider donating to the World Wildlife Fund. https://protect.worldwildlife.org/page/53256/donate/1