William Steiner at Orangewood Children’s Cottages. (Photo by Clay Miller, Orange County Register)
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 Berkeley and a master’s in social work from USC.
He worked to find homes for children with the Los Angeles County Department of Adoptions. He was champion to mentally ill and troubled youth at Metropolitan State Hospital and other programs for abused and neglected kids. He became director of the Good Samaritan Centers, a Lutheran children’s agency, then head of Orange County’s Albert Sitton Home for abused and neglected children in 1978.
There, Steiner almost went to jail for refusing a judge’s order to return a child to a home that he felt was unsafe (he managed to convince the judge of that at a subsequent hearing). But conditions at the facility appalled him. Sometimes there was no hot water. Sometimes there weren’t enough beds. Sometimes kids had to sleep on the floor.
County officials said they didn’t have the money to fix things. So Steiner leveraged his considerable charm and a righteous cause into a private-public partnership that raised some $8 million to build the Orangewood Children’s Home, a spacious, Spanish-style complex of a dozen cottages that opened in 1985.
Orange Mayor Dan Slater remembered touring Orangewood with Steiner, and being stunned by the squall from the newborn room. That, Steiner told him, is because they’re detoxifying from the alcohol and drugs that were in their systems when they were born.
Orangewood’s cottages were built to reduce the trauma of children removed due to abuse and neglect, said Juvenile Court Judge Craig Arthur — each complete with a kitchen, family room, TV, bedrooms, “a caring environment where kids felt like they were still in a home,” he said. “Thirty-plus years later, it continues to be cutting edge and one of its kind in California.”
In 1986, Steiner left to become executive director of the Orangewood Foundation, which would go on to raise millions more for Orange County youth. He continued to work on children’s issues in his retirement, even as respiratory issues slowed him down. He died on Dec. 15, 2022, on his way to New York to spend time with his grandson, eat at a great steak house and take a 9/11 tour.
Orange City Councilmember Jon Dumitru hopes that, many years from now, people look at the street sign in front of Orangewood, wonder “Who was that Steiner guy?” and learn his legacy.
They’ll find inspiration to pursue the noble cause of public service, said Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento.
Steiner has five children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. All five Steiner “kids” got small “Steiner Way” signs to take home.
“I miss him every day,” said son Scott Steiner, a Superior Court judge. “His official portrait hangs in my courtroom. Every time I get frustrated I look over my shoulder — and he reminds me how to calm down and see the good in people.”
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