Steele-Reese Foundation Scholarship
ELEANOR STEELE-REESE BIOGRAPHY
Eleanor Steele-Reese was born in 1893 and grew up in New York City where her father, Charles Steele, was a partner of J. P. Morgan. She spent her childhood in a world of affluence and ease, but it was also a rigid world in which young women were not encouraged to pursue professional careers. However, she was ambitious and sedulous and sought the training for a serious musical career. For more than two decades she performed as an opera singer and recitalist in Europe and in the U. S. At the beginning of World War II she settled briefly in Connecticut before going West to start a new life at a time when many people are comfortably settling themselves into middle age. She never returned to the East, to the wealthy world of her childhood, or to the glamorous world of professional music.
She met and married Emmet P. Reese in 1941. During the early 1930’s, he had left Southern Kentucky for Central Idaho, the most remote and unspoiled area he could find in the continental United States. As a matter of preference, he lived an independent life virtually a frontiersman for several years trapping beaver, maintaining a small herd of steers in a mountain pasture, panning for gold, occasionally working on ranches or packing materials into the wilderness area for the Forest Service. At the time of their marriage, he and Eleanor bought and operated a small working ranch in a narrow mountain valley near Shoup, Idaho next to the wilderness area. In the mid-1950’s they moved to a large spread in nearby Salmon which they operated until a few years before her death in 1977. Emmet died in 1982.
Their life for fifteen years at the Shoup ranch was simple and strenuous. She helped with the manual labor of building the log structures, cooked for the ranch hands year after year, canned most of the fruit and vegetables grown and used on the ranch, and kept the breeding and business records on their herd of Hereford bulls. The bull herd quickly became one of the finest in the state, and the Reeses gained their living from the proceeds of their labor. Eleanor’s inheritance remained intact. It was her duty, she felt, to put it to a permanent good use, so after years of pondering the problem she set up the Steele-Reese Foundation in 1955 in honor of her family and Emmet’s. By the time they died, the Reeses had given almost everything they owned to the Foundation.
Because they had more satisfaction in helping others than in indulging themselves, they avoided credit for their philanthropy. The attitude behind their giving was as firm and unsentimental as every aspect of their lives on the ranch. They wanted to help people and organizations to help themselves, and they knew that mere handouts often weakened the recipients more than helped them.
In developing the Foundation’s grant policies and in setting up The Steele-Reese Scholarship Endowment, the trustees of the Foundation have tried to reflect the personal philosophies of the Reeses. You should be proud of your achievements that have qualified you for one of these scholarships. As a result of the education that Eleanor and Emmet Reese have helped to furnish, you will be in a favored position to help yourself and to help others for the rest of your life.
You may feel that the personal qualities of the Reeses are worth emulating. In future years you might keep in mind that you can share with them the satisfaction they had in helping students, if you are so inclined. One way is to make a small contribution to the principal of this endowment at your school if your finances permit you to do so.
On behalf of the Reeses, the Trustees of the Steele-Reese Foundation warmly wish you success in your studies and in whatever career you pursue.