Steve Billick

IN LOVING MEMORY OF STEVE BILLICK
The family and friends of the late Steve Billick of Merrillville would like to honor his memory on this day, which would have been his ninety-seventh birthday. He was born on June, 15th 1919 to a family which was leaving the newly formed Czechoslovakia for America following the upheaval of the First World War. His early childhood was spent as the youngest child of an immigrant family in Pennsylvania, but soon many of the Czechoslovaks migrated to Gary, Indiana to find work at US Steel Gary Works. His youth was then spent on Gary's east side, graduating from Emerson High School in 1937. He developed a deep passion for the outdoors which he would hold for the rest of his life, living just beyond the edge of the great fishing waters of Lake Michigan. But it wasn't long until the same sort of global events which sent the Billick family to America would send young Steve back across the Atlantic. He was conscripted into the US Army to fight in the European theater of the Second World War. He traveled to Texas for basic training and was soon shipped across waters much wider than his beloved Lake Michigan into events that must have seemed more than half a world away from fishing for salmon out on his small boat. He fought bravely in the German offensive known as the Battle of the Bulge, in the thick forests of the Ardennes region on the Western Front of the final chapters of the War. The battle was the largest and bloodiest of the War for the US, and tens of thousands of young men were lost, but it resulted in German defeat. The years after WWII were prosperous and fruitful ones for so many of those who survived to return home. Steve Billick soon joined the Gary Police Force in 1950, beginning as a patrol cop, but eventually earning the rank of sergeant before becoming a homicide detective. In these years he met his eventual wife Helen and they began to build a family, while Steve began to design and build their house on Bon Aire Lake in Merrillville by hand with the help of a few close friends. For the rest of his life he would be known as a great craftsman, capable of building or fixing anything. The detailed approach he utilized as a detective was brought to every other aspect of his life. It was during this period that he would go on fly-in fishing trips to rural Canada with his best buddies, spending weeks at a time in remote areas camping and hiking and fishing for salmon, trout, and northern pike. He retired from the force in 1974 after 24 years of service. Helen and Steve would spend the rest of their years in the beautiful house on the lake which he had built, marked by its great willow trees and flocks of mallard ducks that would come up to the porch in the mornings to be fed. He was always defined by that incredible generosity, always wanting to give to any friend or family member or dog or cat or duck who may have been in need. A child of the Great Depression, he always made sure that those around him were abundantly provided for. His life, like that of so many members of his generation, was an incredibly hard-fought but fulfilled one. And all of those fortunate enough to have known him are better people for having adopted just a few of the qualities which he possessed in multitude. He was so many things to all of us. Steve Billick excelled with distinction in every role he assumed: soldier, detective, outdoorsman, craftsman, father, grandfather and friend. We all miss him dearly and ask you to join us in honoring him on this day. Love from the Billick Family, Austin Texas