Steve Lange leaves a legacy of kindness, faith and music

If you knew Steve Lange, you're probably feeling both great loss and gratitude — for the love he poured into you and perhaps your family, for the encouragement he gave, for the welcoming space he provided, for the musical talents he shared, for the friendship, for the humility he exemplified.

If you ever wanted a role model, holy smokes, Steve Lange was it.

“He is the personification of everything we all say we want to be,” friend Rick Laub said. “He really was that person. I mean, we all want to be kind, but are we always kind? We all want to all have the best intentions for other people, and he was just one of those people who personified those things. He actually made those things happen. I think of the effect he had on our kids growing up and the example that he would live; not talk about, but live.”

Dr. Stephen Lange died unexpectedly Thursday, though his health had been declining. He was 76.

He spent 45 of those years as the organist, choir director and minister of music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Lansing, 47 years directing the Lange Choral Ensemble, and 51 years married to Nancy, whom he'd met in class at Michigan State. They remember the circumstances of that first meeting differently.

“I claim that the room was full, except for one empty seat by him, which I sat in,” Nancy said Friday. “He claims the room was empty and I deliberately sat by him. We started dating and I knew on the second date. It took him over a year to propose.”

She was drawn to his sense of humor, how bright he was and his kindness. “Qualities that didn’t change,” she said.

Many others, including myself, enjoyed and benefited from those same qualities throughout our entire lives. I, too, am one of the hundreds whose life was shaped by Steve Lange, one of the many to grow up in his children’s choirs at St. Paul’s — cherub through high school. One of the many choristers to take part in the musicals he led, “Godspell” and “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” And one of the hundreds to be included on one of the 11 trips to England with the high school choir that he and Nancy spearheaded.

Yes, 11 times they took more than a dozen teenagers overseas for three weeks. Every four years. Did I mention yet that patience was also among his greatest gifts.

“He loved it,” Nancy said of his time at St. Paul’s. “Loved the high school choir most of all. Loved that age group and their promise and potential.”

He’d invest in kindergartners just the same.

“Some of my favorite memories were him sitting down in what we called our listening shape, with pretzel legs and your hands folded in your lap,” said Maureen Nauss, who helped teach the cherub choir for 20 years and was in Lange’s children’s choirs herself when he first arrived at St. Paul’s. “And he would work to get himself down on the floor with the kids, with me. It was just, it was not his forte, and yet he was so good with them.

“I had a student who was very difficult. And I vented about it to Steve one time. And he said to me, ‘You know, he isn't who he's going to be. He's on his way to who he's becoming.’ It just really stopped me. That's how he dealt with all of us — adults, children, everybody — that you weren't done yet.”

He cared the same about his best singers as he did the people who weren’t so sure about their voice, nurturing them both, encouraging them, elevating their talent and confidence.

"If there's a little bit of a flame of goodness there, I try to nurture it and help it grow," Lange said before retiring from St. Paul's in 2015. "I hopefully made it a safe place for kids."

The number of folks who’ve spent their lives in music after beginning in Lange’s choirs is a tribute to that. Same for the number of people who, years later, still have warm feelings every time they drive by that choir room. Several times a week, in my case.

FROM 2015: Couch: Steve Lange shared patience, kindness and music in 45 years at St. Paul's Episcopal Church

“He was a person who knew how to give unconditional love. And was so encouraging,” said Martie Repaskey, one of the early members of the Lange choral ensemble and also a longtime participant in his St. Paul’s adult choir. “I’m not the greatest singer in the world, but I had some lessons with him. And he just had such a great way of teaching and encouraging.”

Lange’s kindness is told through small acts that still mean everything — a letter to a friend and singer whose spouse had just left them, offering organ lessons to someone who’d dreamed of playing the pipe organ at St. Paul’s, but had hardly mastered the piano.

If you were doing something — playing a sport, in a show — he and Nancy would make it a point to come see you.

He loved puns. Bad puns. He'd drop one in front of the adult choir and then smile to a chorus of groans.

When he conducted, “His whole face became magical,” said Emily Clark, who has spent her life in music after first joining the St. Paul’s choir at 16. Her story, in that sense, is not unique.

“You can't help but feel what the music is saying because he portrays it all over his body,” continued Clark, who joined the Lange Ensemble as an adult, as did two of her children.

What the music was saying was as important as the music itself to Lange. He saw it as an instrument of his faith.

“He chose great music and then he would not just get us to sing it, but he would get us to understand where it was coming from,” said Deborah McMartin-Finkel, who helped teach his cherub choirs decades ago and sang with his adult choir and ensemble to the end. “He just brought so much insight to everything.”

“Steve's presence was absolutely unique in that it was not about the music,” said Laub, who also sang in both the adult choir and ensemble. “It was about essentially praising God. And, so, he was less concerned that the music was the best music, as it was, how was he elevating the service at church every single Sunday.”

Lange was more than music at St. Paul’s — he was at the center of many of the adult Christian education programs during his later years there. And there was more to him outside of the church, as well.

He loved woodworking — he built two wooden canoes — and gardening and nature. He was an outstanding tennis player into his 70s. He and Nancy traveled a lot together, often with friends, regularly to Europe. He fell in love with wilderness adventures. He, Nancy and her brother, Dave Harrington, took trips to the Upper Peninsula and Ontario, Canada, canoeing through difficult waterways. They’d pack their tents and sleeping bags in a canoe and go downstream for four or five days, finding someplace to camp at night.

“It was truly a wildness experience,” Harrington said. “He was very easy going, always willing to try. This canoeing stretched him as far as his comfort zone.”

Lange, who grew in Three Oaks, Michigan, spent his life in Lansing. This became his place. A lucky place.

“He was the kind of person that would make not only a connection with each person, but inspire them, and inspire them in such a way as to give the best that they could,” said friend, travel companion and chorister Mark Rudd. “Steve's the kind of person we should all end up growing up to be.”

He put so much into so many people who are still giving of music and good works and kindness in their everyday lives. It’s a fabulous legacy. A giving of generational wealth of sorts.

“He might be the finest person I've ever known,” McMartin-Finkel said. “ … I don't think I would be the only one to say that, either. I'm quite sure.”

A memorial service for Lange is scheduled for 11:00 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 4 at Central United Methodist Church in downtown Lansing.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Steve Lange leaves a legacy of kindness, faith and music