Winona | Collegian
Steve Masty ’76 as a senior at Hillsdale College. He died Dec. 26 of last year.
After graduating from Hillsdale College in 1976, Steve Masty befriended Russell Kirk, attended the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, wrote speeches for President Ronald Reagan, and spent several years in Afghanistan before returning to England to work for the Adam Smith Institute. He died last year on Dec. 26, the feast of St. Stephen, just two weeks after turning 61.
Masty was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, on Dec. 12, 1954. He attended Seaholm High School in Birmingham, Michigan, where he was suspended for impersonating American Comedian W.C. Fields in a controversial skit.
At Hillsdale, Masty developed a reputation as musical, poetic, and brilliant, but his friends also found him jovial.
During his senior year, he helped create a campus game called “Snow-bomb” in which students dump a bucket of snow over their opponent’s head before the opponent launched a firecracker. He also joined an entire class in adding a fictional source to the bibliography of their research papers. The professor John Willson noticed and responded by commenting, “One of my favorite scholarly books,” or, “I keep this on my nightstand.”
Harry Veryser, assistant to the president at the time, said Masty always noticed things differently. He one day called college President George Roche’s red, leather shoes “the ruby slippers.” In class, he combined this unique outlook with his artistic abilities to produce masterpiece cartoons depicting the lectures.
Yet Masty shocked his professors with his impressive wit and intellect. When prompted to discuss what he learned in Willson’s reformation class on the final exam, Masty responded with a four-stanza poem called the “Reformation Rag.”
“It was not only historically and theologically profound, but it was funny; it was outrageous,” Willson said. “The opening two lines on his Martin Luther section were, ‘Good ole Martin wasn’t just fartin’ around.’” Willson still has the poem.
Among other privileges, Masty drove Russell Kirk home from Hillsdale each week — a two-and-a-half-hour trip. The long conversations influenced Masty deeply, Willson said.
Masty worked twice as an editor for the Collegian, joined Delta Sigma Phi, and won multiple writing awards at Hillsdale. After graduating, he worked towards a doctorate in literature at the University of St. Andrews. Although he ultimately decided against academics as a career, his friendships remained intellectual.
“The details of our meetings are probably nugatory — that we drank Dubonnet at a local crêperie and that he visited my improvised basement study to view the first collected edition of Edmund Burke’s works and a large portrait of the Marchesa Casati,” Jamieson said.
Making the most of his witty way with words, Masty wrote speeches for Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President George H. W. Bush, and former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. He also worked for Lee Edwards, a distinguished fellow in conservative thought.
“Lee once told me that Steve Masty turned out higher quality prose in a shorter period of time than anyone he’d ever worked with, which is unbelievable praise,” Willson said.
Masty traveled to 66 countries but most prominent was his time in Afghanistan, a time when the Soviet Union’s invasion was at its peak. Masty developed relationships with the African mujahedin and advised Reagan during this time. One journalist even said hyperbolically, “In a way, Steve Masty won the Cold War.”
In his eulogy, Masty’s brother, Tom, said Steve was also theologically motivated.
“Steve was always driven by what he might have failed to do,” Tom Masty said. “He feared being elderly and having failed to live his life to its fullest or having failed to help those with fewer opportunities.”
With this fear in mind, Masty made it his goal to help developing countries find ways to take advantage of some of the best things about the modern world while not giving up their traditional culture. He helped bring electricity into several regions and “embraced those who were in need and those disenfranchised from the benefits of modern society,” Tom Masty said.
Yet, he also worked within the framework of their culture. He learned to love much of the Muslim world and discovered the Afghani people are lovers of poetry. His knowledge of their culture led him to publish a book in 2006 titled “The Muslim & Microphone: Miscommunications in the War on Terror,” which explains how to talk to young Muslims who may still be swayed in one direction or another.
One of his last positions was secretary to the minister of agriculture in the Afghanistan government. He was challenged with diminishing the growth of poppy — the plant used to make morphine and heroin. Because it is easy to grow, many families rely on it as their sole source of revenue. Masty absorbed their culture so that he could react in ways they would understand.
Through his many travels, Masty rarely had time to return to Michigan.
“Steve would come in and out of your life. He would appear and then he would disappear. The fellow was kind of mysterious in that way,” Veryser said. “But he never changed. He was always adventurous, a man of mystery, talented beyond words, and bright. He was the kind of guy you couldn’t help but like.”
Much more than that, Masty was a man dedicated to God who believed that faith was important when demonstrated through works of mercy and compassion.
“Steve proposed that we know truth through our striving to comprehend God,” Tom Masty said. “This works by getting a read on the patterns of truth founded by observing numerous factors such as sacred scripture, reason, loci, the wisdom of the magisterium, and tradition itself. And in that manner, he proposed that we use these avenues of truth to triangulate that which is of real importance: God’s truth.”