By Brian T. Olszewski of the Catholic Herald Staff

On Dec. 1, 1970, doctors told Maddie Gastreich that the boy to whom she had just given birth would only live for 12 hours. He was three months premature, and weighed two pounds, four ounces. He needed oxygen. When he made it to the 12-hour mark, but with his weight dropping – eventually falling to one pound, 10 ounces, they told her maybe he would live for 72 hours, but then he would die.

She didn’t accept the doctors’ prognosis.

“I knew God was going to let him live,” she said the day after the boy to whom she gave birth, Steven, celebrated his 35th birthday. “God was going to lead him into something to do for him.”

That Steven was born blind due to retinopathy of permaturity, a condition caused by too much oxygen, did not lessen Maddie’s belief that her son was going to do something good with his life.

Steven graduated from Holy Assumption School, West Allis, where there was a program for blind and visually-impaired students, and from Pius XI High School, Milwaukee, which several blind students attended.

At UW – Whitewater, he earned a bachelor’s degree in communications in 1994, and began an odyssey into and out of the work world that would last for the next 11 years.

“I had planned to go into radio, but that didn’t work out for me,” he said of his career plans in an industry that was rapidly changing and which offered few opportunities at the time he graduated.

Hopes and disappointments

That fall, Steven applied for a customer service job at Ameritech, and passed the tests they gave him. In April 1995, they interviewed him and, 10 months later, hired him. But the speech software that told him what was on the screen was not being updated as quickly as the written message. It was no longer possible for him to do the job.

“It took them 16 months to hire me and three and a half months to let me go,” Steven recalled, noting that the company gave him a letter of recommendation.

Over the next year, Steven’s time was occupied with a short-lived, part-time telemarketing job, volunteer work, classes in which he updated his computer skills, and a continuation of the search for full-time work.

“I interviewed all over the place!” he said.

His father, Bob, said employers didn’t know what they were missing.

“Steven is very loyal,” he said. “He would do a very good job if given the chance.”

As she was the one who drove him to interviews, Maddie can attest to how often her son applied and what he endured in the process.

“I have a drawer in the basement filled with information about where we’ve been,” she said. “One place they put us in the hall to wait. Another time the boss saw us coming and went out the backdoor. Receptionists’ mouths would drop when they’d see us.”

In October 1998, Mount Mary College hired Steven part time to recruit students. A switch to a computerized dialing system combined with budget cuts put him out of work as the new millennium began.

“I guess my work history was not Y2K compliant,” he joked.

Steven thought his employment drought was over in spring 2002 when the position of volunteer coordinator for the Badger Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired – a position for which he had applied and interviewed twice the previous year before the association selected another candidate – came open.

“I really, really wanted that job,” Steven said.

It didn’t happen.

“I was devastated,” he said. “I said, ‘Here we are again.’”

Sign from above Hales Corners

The day Steven received the rejection letter from the Badger Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired, his parents were flying back to Milwaukee from a Florida vacation. As it made its approach to Mitchell Field, the plane tipped in such a way that Bob and Maddie could see the dome of Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners.

“‘Steven, you’ve got to look into Sacred Heart,’” Maddie recalled telling her son when they got home.

Given his lack of success in finding a job, Steven figured, “The church must want me.”

He met with the admissions people at Sacred Heart that summer and began the admission process with the intention of getting the education he’d need for lay ministry. He also went to Toronto for World Youth Day where the theme and the preaching of Pope John Paul II emphasized “light of the world and salt of the earth.”

“Maybe it means something to me,’” Steven recalled thinking.

He began the fall semester before knowing whether or not he had been accepted. His first nine credits included six in philosophy that were needed to satisfy an academic void in that area.

“There were some equipment issues,” Steven recalled about his early weeks at Sacred Heart. However, by tape recording lectures, utilizing the Notetaker program on his computer, and with “excellent support from the library” he completed the work.

The same semester another blind student who was studying for the priesthood enrolled at Sacred Heart. His computer, which he willingly shared with Steven, was in the library. Material scanned into it came out as either a Braille version or audio version. The seminarian left Sacred Heart, but he left the computer at the school.

“All Kathy (Harty, head librarian at Sacred Heart) was doing was scanning stuff,” he said with a laugh.

Besides Harty, Steven received help from Lois Seiberlich, librarian at Pius XI High School, and her friend, Lorraine Small who read and taped readings from textbooks.

“I depended upon a lot people,” he said.

Once his coursework was completed in spring of 2005, Steven had to make a major academic decision: Should he do a 30-page thesis or take oral and written comprehensive exams?

“I was never a person who loves to do research,” he said about choosing the comprehensives.

While Steven planned to organize his materials and study throughout the summer for the October exams, a bout with mononucleosis and some lingering self-doubt hampered him.

“Can I really do everything I have to do?” he wondered.

The speech software program that translated material only worked on his computer. With borrowed disks that translated the questions into Braille, he was able to complete the three-hour written portion of the exam.

“Thank goodness for good friends,” he said.

A week later, having passed the written portion, he completed the hour-long oral part of the exam with three of his professors. Less than 10 minutes later, they gave him the good news.

“It was a major hurdle,” he said of his graduate accomplishment. “It’s done. It’s really done. It’s a great feeling.” He will receive his diploma during the school’s May 2006 commencement.

Inspiration to others

Dr. Steven Shippee, chair of the master’s program and head of Steven’s comprehensive committee, called him “remarkable” and a “very bright guy.”

“We were impressed with his background, his interest in theology, and his experience,” he said.

The theology professor noted that Steven’s presence at Sacred Heart provided “mutual enrichment for all” who are part of that community.

“He was an inspiration to others,” he said.

Fr. Ralph Gross, pastor at St. Margaret Mary Parish, Milwaukee, where the Gastreichs are members, noted that Steven is a cantor, choir member, and participant in the parish’s annual variety show.

“Nothing seems to stand in the way of this guy,” Fr. Gross said. “He has a big heart, and he loves the church. He enjoys using his gifts and sharing them. I’ve been inspired by him.”

Salvatorian Fr. Raul Gomez Ruiz, who served as Steven’s academic advisor at Sacred Heart, said his advisee was focused upon what he hoped to accomplish.

“He brings a whole new notion (to the idea) that one’s physical limitations don’t have to limit his ability to learn and minister.”

Fr. Gomez added, “I hope he gets to use it.”

During the time Steven was seeking employment, he was not idle. He is on the board of Blind Outdoor Leisure Development – a group through which he learned to downhill ski when he was 11, he volunteers at St. Anne’s Home for the Elderly, and he coordinates activities for the blind and visually impaired through the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

As of this past summer, he’s also engaged to be married to Carrie Krassman, a fifth-grade teacher at St. Mary School, Elm Grove, whom he has been dating for four years.

“We had a ‘blindness connection,’” he said of the woman he has known since they were children participating in activities for the blind and visually impaired. Steven said that Carrie, who has a visual impairment, encouraged him as he endured rejection in the job market and then pursued his graduate degree.

“She’s been very supportive,” he said. “She hung in there with me through everything.”

The obstacle course that Steven has navigated has had an impact upon his faith life.

“It definitely challenged my faith life,” he said of the rejection and disappointment he experienced. “It brought me closer to God.”

The more he was challenged, the more he prayed.

“’C’mon, God, what’s your plan?’” Steven said he would pray. “’I want a paycheck; I want a paycheck with fulfillment. I want to know I’m using the gifts you’ve given me; give me direction.’”

Steven got that direction last week when he learned he had been accepted into the first unit of the clinical pastoral experience program at Alexian Village in Milwaukee. As part of the program he will receive education and training in chaplaincy from March through June 2006. He will complete the following three units from September 2006 through May 2007 as part of a residency program at another facility.

Should Steven eventually become a chaplain, he expects his life experiences will help him relate to those to whom he’ll minister.

“These battles were forming me for ministry,” he said.

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