He’d turn bright red, call everyone he knew and speak really fast. “They’re naming a street after me!” he’d exclaim. “Can you believe it?!”
On Monday, Aug. 5, the road fronting Orangewood Children’s Home shed its “Justice Center Way” moniker and officially became “Steiner Way” in homage to the late Bill Steiner, a fun-loving child welfare activist, mentor to foster youth, fish-out-of-water politician, genuinely nice guy and force behind Orangewood, a humane landing spot for kids suffering trauma.
“He would love it,” said Steiner’s daughter, Laurie Hendron, as a cadre of O.C. movers and shakers gathered on a bright, sunny Orange morning to mark the street name change and laud Steiner, who died in 2022 at age 85.
There’s a reason it’s Steiner Way and not Steiner Street or Drive or Road, County Supervisor Don Wagner said. Steiner did, indeed, have a way about him. Soft-spoken, kindly, cooperative, respectful. He could work with others regardless of party or political stripe to get things done.
When U.S. Rep. Lou Correa, a Democrat, first beat a Republican rival for office many years ago, one of his first congratulatory phone calls came from Steiner, a Republican. “I became an admirer of Bill Steiner,” Correa said. “He knew what good government was all about.”
Steiner served on the Orange school board and city council before becoming a county supervisor shortly before the bottom fell out of Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert Citron’s investments. Politics happened but was never really Steiner’s thing: “Dad was all about children,” said son Jim Steiner. “Not just his, but all children. It was his life’s mission to advocate for children who were being abused and neglected.”
Steiner was born in Iowa and came to California as a child when his father took a job with a steel company during World War II. He grew up in Bell (where his mother would later fight city corruption), earned a degree in criminology from UC…
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