She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [27]
Once, in a rare moment of candor, Steve confided in McEachern about his past, saying that when he and Elise were newlyweds, he lost their savings in a bad investment. “I learned my lesson,” he said. “I won’t ever let myself be poor again.”
By the late eighties Steve was well-known in his adopted city. He was active on the city’s Red Cross, volunteering as director one year. At the Headliners, a private club for media types, including execs, editors, and reporters, he made many good friends. Among them were Austin’s former mayor, Roy Butler, who owned the city’s main beer distributorship, and Gene Bauman, who ran Butler’s two popular country western radio stations. Steve advertised KBVO on Butler’s stations, and every year he and Elise went on the radio stations’ advertising trip. They were extravagant, all-expenses-paid outings, often to points in Europe. And in China, Steve and Elise purchased an intricate embroidered silk kimono they hung over the fireplace.
At the station, Steve’s management style reflected his roots, in an era when successful men drew careful boundaries. Although he cared deeply about the people who worked for him, he kept a certain distance. Still, when he knew someone needed help, he often quietly did what he could. One year, when a custodian fell upon hard times, Steve brought the man clothing. When his secretary’s car broke down, he talked a friend who ran a dealership into giving her a good deal on a new one.
With Elise’s love of golf, one of the first places the Beards set up roots was the Austin Country Club, just minutes down the hill from the Terrace Mountain Drive house, paying the then-going rate for a membership of $50,000. One of the top women players, she teed off three to four times a week and was jubilant the day she made a hole-in-one. While Elise, whose voice grew gravelly from the cigarettes—and her skin leathery from years in the sun—never hesitated to offer an opinion, she did it with such gusto that the other women enjoyed the give and take. At night the Beards often drank and dined with friends. “They were always there,” says a waitress. “Mr. Beard would tell me to cut him off after a few drinks, and I did. Sometimes he’d want more and grumble, but he’d say, ‘Good girl.’”
Elise and Steve loved animals, and in the early nineties she bought him a dog, Meagan, a yellow lab–golden retriever mix, from a local shelter. Meagan quickly became Steve’s shadow, following him through the house and sleeping at the foot of their bed. When strangers arrived, Meagan announced their presence with a formidable bark, then eyed them, looking for cues from Steve.
In 1992, Steve and his partner, Cannan, bought out KBVO-TV’s third investor, and his share of the station jumped to thirty percent. He threw a party for the staff at the Headliners Club to mark the station’s tenth anniversary. It was a grand event, with food and drink, and he presided proudly. It seemed his life just kept getting better. Then his success became bittersweet.
Elise fell ill.
“It started when Mom had this backache,” says Paul. At first doctors speculated that Elise, whose words were slurred, had suffered a small stroke. But that wasn’t it. “Mom had a brain tumor.”
It happened in March 1993, and at first Steve told no one. Lisa Ottenbacher, his personal secretary, didn’t understand why he seemed so preoccupied until the day he finally called her to his office. She knew he was carefully controlling his emotions as he explained that Elise was gravely ill. It was a family matter, and he didn’t discuss it further, except to tell Lisa that she might have to cover for him, since he’d be absent more than usual. From that day on, he left often, first to take Elise to doctors, then to be with her while she underwent