Obituary of Stephen Pickering
Stephen S. Pickering
Steve Pickering, 85, passed away on December 30, 2025, at Regional Hospice in Danbury, Connecticut, from complications of Parkinson’s.
Stephen Scothorne Pickering was born on August 31, 1940 in Spokane, Washington, son of George and Ethel (Foltz) Pickering. Steve grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, including time in Oakland and Lafayette, where he attended Acalanes High School, graduating in 1958. From there he went to the University of California, Riverside, graduating in 1963 with honors in drama.
He was then drafted into the Army, working as an information specialist (journalist) at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
After leaving the Army, he continued in journalism, working for newspapers in Jerusalem, New Jersey and New York; he completed a Masters in Middle East Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1977.
His career in journalism culminated with a long stint at The New York Times on the Editorial and Op-Ed pages, editing such luminaries as Russell Baker, Tom Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Anna Quindlen, A.M. Rosenthal, and William Safire. On his retirement, Quindlen compared him to the little cartoon angel standing on the shoulder of his column writers, saying, “He is the voice from your heart to which you were trying not to listen.”
In 1983, Steve met his wife, Pat, through a mutual friend who knew they had both gone to Acalanes High School, though they hadn’t known each other at the time. They married in 1990.
Steve loved to travel, hike, read, and write, and he wrote a book about his parents’ families, Two Families West: Foltzes and Pickerings, and How They Got There.
Steve is survived by his wife, Patricia, of Katonah, New York; his two stepchildren, Jill McClain, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Patrick McClain, of Herndon, Virginia; his sister, Martha O’Neal, of Millbrae, California; his brother, Dennis Pickering, of Bastrop, Texas; and three grandchildren, Will, Sadie and Charlotte, who would be surprised and dismayed to have step- included in the relationship.
Plans for a memorial service have not yet been announced.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Parkinson’s Foundation.
Steve takes with him a wonderful, dry sense of humor, a love of language, and an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything. He will be deeply missed.
