Jim and Alison Steadman

Since first coming to Chautauqua in the late 1970s, Jim and Alison Steadman have gradually deepened their involvement—time at Chautauqua has been integral to their family’s dynamic. The Steadmans want to ensure that the same opportunities would be available to future generations. That is why they used their estate plans to establish the James R. and Alison T. Steadman Boys' and Girls' Club Endowment.

Please read our full interview with Jim and Alison below.

Can you please tell me a bit about yourself and about how you began coming to Chautauqua?

JS: We started coming to Chautauqua in the summer of 1978, when our first child was nine months old. We live in Erie and it’s an hour drive. We’d come over a couple of times every summer for church services or concerts. Later, our youngest daughter worked at Chautauqua for two summers during college and of course we’d go over to visit her. But on our 40th wedding anniversary, we wanted to get all the kids together. We have three children and wanted to do something as a family, so I said, “How about renting a cottage at Chautauqua?” Well, everyone came home, and everyone had a spectacular time. They’d all go their ways in the morning to whatever they were interested in, then they’d come back, we’d discuss it at dinner, we’d make plans for the next day, and we would do it again. It was just a little slice of heaven. So, the following year we decided we would do it for two weeks. And I think that’s the summer that Annie and Scott, our daughter who lives in Boston and her husband, started looking around for property. They called us and said, “We’ve found a building lot at Chautauqua, and we are going to buy it and build a cottage.” And we looked at each other and said, “Let’s go in on that with them because we can get a bigger bang for the buck when both families are doing it together.” Construction started in the fall of 2015, and we got ‘done’, by the grace of God, at noon on the day before the season opened in 2016. Inside, quiet work continued for a while. We would be there on weekends to clean up, going back and forth to Erie. The following summer was the first we stayed there all summer and we’ve done it ever since. As far as involvement at Chautauqua…

AS: It was gradual, our involvement.

JS: Alison does monitoring for Special Studies and she likes that very much. I worked full-time until January 2020 and my thought was as soon as I was done, I would join the Motet Choir. I knew Jared Jacobsen, the longtime organist and choir director, because we grew up together in a little town called Girard. So that summer we retired was of course the summer of COVID-19. We decided that we’d go to Chautauqua for the shutdown, so we moved into the house and lived there until the fall. Some people were gathered around, and there were some very pale imaginings of a season that summer, but then in 2021 it was almost the full deal. I joined the choir last summer. The choir schedule is so encompassing. We sing every weekday and twice on Sundays, plus we’ve got rehearsals. All our grandchildren went to Children's School and Boys’ and Girls’ Club. That was the catalyst that got us thinking about doing an endowment for Chautauqua to benefit the Boys’ and Girls’ Club. We think that more young people would come to Chautauqua if they figured out what they could do with their kids. Well, there's plenty to do with your kids here.

AS: Our grandkids love it. They love Children's School and Boys’ and Girls’ Club. And they just love Chautauqua. They love the freedom they feel when they get on their bikes and take off. In fact, our youngest granddaughter, who's six, took off and got herself to Bestor Plaza by herself last summer. But she could read enough words that she could find the bus to get herself home. She felt very confident.

JS: Meanwhile, people were becoming unglued at the house thinking, “What happened to her? Where did she go?” Then she steps off the bus…

AS: We said, “Rindy we didn’t know where you were,” and she said, “Well I knew where I was.” They love to get themselves to Club, they love to get home, they love to get to Bestor Plaza and play soccer.

JS: Yeah, it’s the independence and the ability to feel that they can run around town, just like we did when we were kids. But it was a different time then, so Chautauqua has become a place of freedom and independence for our grandchildren.

AS: It helps them build self-confidence because they go off by themselves and they know that we’re trusting them.

You’ve been coming to Chautauqua for so many years and have continually deepened your involvement. Do you have any favorite memories, or are there any special touchstones at Chautauqua, that encompass the experience for you?

JS: It's just the feeling of having the family gathered together in a place that’s safe, inspiring, and intellectually stimulating. Truth matters here, and it’s an environment that we love.

AS: Our son-in-law says, “The problems of the world seem to wash away,” and you get absorbed into this small-town community feeling where everyone speaks to you. It’s a nice, warm, welcoming feeling.

JS: And if you don’t think so, get a dog. Our daughter’s family got a dog last summer—a basset hound puppy—so she walks her most of the time. But I will walk her, and people know the dog! Just walking the dog has enabled me to meet folks, some of whom start the conversation with: “Who are you? You've got Annie's dog!”

AS: It’s nice to have the feeling when somebody walks by that they will stop and chat with you when you’re sitting on your porch. Or they’ll come up and sit with you. We love the Fourth of July. It's a ‘Norman Rockwell’ kind of feeling when you're sitting in Bestor Plaza with everybody singing and chatting, with the kids running around.

I think you’ve really captured what makes Chautauqua so special. I’m also always blown away by the breadth of programming that is available in such a compact physical space.

AS: There’s something for everybody. If you say you can’t find anything to do, you're not looking very hard. Aside from the lectures, concerts and classes, you can ride your bikes, you can listen to the choir rehearse, go to the theater or the movies…

JS: Or the opera.

AS: Everything is all there in one community.

JS: It allows you to do something that you might not otherwise ordinarily do. For instance, they do the Opera Invasion, which is spectacular. And for people who have never been to the opera, it's like, “Wow this is going on and I didn't even know about this!”

AS: What’s nice about all these things being offered to you is that you can walk to them no matter what it is. You don’t have to get in your car. You don’t have to force the family to do something they don’t want to. If nobody wants to go with you, “That’s okay, I’ll tell you about it when I get home.” And having the ability, and this is going to sound terrible, to leave one of the lectures or one of the concerts if you don’t like it. You have the freedom of individuality in everything that’s being offered.

It’s obvious that there are so many things that you are passionate about at Chautauqua. What made you choose to focus your planned gift on Youth & Family Programs?

JS: We want younger people to come to Chautauqua. And we wanted to make sure that the option of having Boys’ and Girls’ Club and the Children's School was open to people. We know that Chautauqua is not an inexpensive place to visit. But we also know that every single person who walks into the Institution, whether they live there, they go there for a concert or a lecture, or they’re just strolling around on a Sunday afternoon, would not have Chautauqua to participate in if it wasn’t for planned giving. That’s what keeps the balls in the air. And you have to pay it forward. We deeply believe it’s important for people to understand that the future success of the Institution is going to depend upon people continuing to make planned gifts.

What was the process for your family to decide to make a planned gift to Chautauqua?

JS: Many years ago, we started a donor advised fund with the Erie Community Foundation which enables us every year to give away the income from that fund. When we die, the fund will stay with the ECF, but that fund has enabled us to give out charitable donations to other organizations each year and that feels good to us. It feels like something we need to do. We have even donated money to Chautauqua from that fund. So, we thought that we ought to do something like that for Chautauqua as well, and to make sure that it has an amount substantially equal to what we gave to the Erie Community Foundation. So, we have put Chautauqua into our estate plan.

AS: It wasn’t a difficult decision because we thought, “Well, let’s do this with Chautauqua where a lot of children will benefit from it.” And this is not only going to benefit our grandchildren, but it is going to benefit other kids too. Scholarships are given to children who might not have the funds to go to Boys’ and Girls’ Club or Children’s School, even a local child who needs to go. But kids make friends at Boys’ and Girls’ Club that last a lifetime. Several of the friends our grandsons have made are in contact with them throughout the year. They find out what week they are coming and it’s as if they saw them last week. The friendship continues.

JS: They make contacts with people from all over the country, and the world, actually.

AS: One of them is a friend from New York City and one is from Denver, Colorado.

JS: And they all know where the candy dish is in our house.

AS: But, no, it was not a difficult decision to plan the gift. Someone did it before and our grandchildren benefitted from it. So, let’s see what we can do to benefit other children.

JS: We are very charitably minded. Our kids are going to be fine. We want to make sure that other people can benefit too.

What would you say to someone who is considering making a planned gift to Chautauqua, but is unsure of whether they want to support a specific program or offer unrestricted support? What would you encourage them to think about as they consider their options?

JS: I would encourage them to think about what’s important to them and their family at Chautauqua, and what they think will be important in the future. What could be accomplished with that gift if they choose to sponsor a lecture series or something like that? I always encourage people to support music. Music doesn’t lie, and it inspires and uplifts an awful lot of people. But Chautauqua does need unrestricted funding too because we don’t know what’s going to come up in the future. We know that there will be things that will arise, and they will need to be supported and done well. Contributing in an unrestricted way will enable the Institution's leaders at that time to make those decisions. I think the Institution has done a tremendous job of shepherding its endowment in a way that assures everybody that everything is going to be done on a first-rate basis. There's no doing it on the cheap and hoping for the best. And that’s important too, because that’s what’s going to keep Chautauqua solid for future generations of people to come.

As the incoming chair of the Planned Giving Committee, is there anything that you hope to accomplish, or anything that you’d like to impart on the planned giving community?

JS: I was a small-town lawyer for a long time. I don’t view myself as special. But I think there are an awful lot of people who are situated like me who think they can't make a donation or set up a fund because it seems like something that ‘other people’ do. And I think planned giving is something that anyone could do if they put their mind to it. If it's thoughtfully approached, particularly as you get into retirement years, and you have IRA money coming in that you must take, you can certainly distribute that directly from the IRA to Chautauqua and provide funding for all kinds of things. It’s an opportunity to leave a little impression on the world that will last beyond your lifetime.

AS: Any small amount can grow.

What are you both most excited for this summer?

AS: Great speakers. And I look forward to the community feeling again. Where we live now in Erie, there is a bit of community feel, but not like the community feel that you have at Chautauqua. So, I’m looking forward to that. And sitting on the front porch.

JS: Chatting with people as they walk by. As I said, we’re very close to Lake Erie and there’s a place called Presque Isle State Park, which stretches out into Lake Erie. There are a lot of walking trails out there and I walk a fair amount. Almost no one says hello. Most folks avert their eyes as you’re walking along. But in Chautauqua, you look at people. You say hello. It’s an enveloping, sustaining, comforting community. We like that.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with the community through this interview?

JS: I just want to emphasize that no one walks through the gates who does not benefit from planned giving. Chautauqua wouldn’t be there but for planned giving. A lot of these longtime families say, “You know, I’ve been here for nine generations’…”

AS: And those families have benefitted from somebody else’s funding. We think more families need to pay it forward because they wouldn’t be there if someone else hadn’t paid it forward. The price of a gate pass doesn’t cover everything.

Thank you both for your support of Chautauqua.