Steele Foundation offers final gift

Newport Beach witnessed the end of an era Monday as the Harry and Grace Steele Foundation bestowed its final gift ? $4.5 million to the Environmental Nature Center.

Over the past 53 years, the Newport Beach-based foundation ? started in 1953 by Grace after the death of her husband, Harry ? has bestowed $170 million to worthy causes, primarily in Newport Beach and elsewhere in Orange County.

As a final gift before dissolving the foundation, the trustees ? Newport residents Audrey Steele Burnand and Betty Steele and their financier Lanny Baird ? decided the remainder of the foundation’s funds should go to the nature center.

The foundation has made substantial gifts during the past half century to such causes as local education, healthcare, nautical interests, museums, the arts and the environment.

“The Steele Foundation represents true charity ? most people want their names up in lights, but not them,” said the foundation’s attorney, Wilbur Layman of Bryan Cave.

The Steeles came to California from Scranton, Penn. and immediately fell in love with the natural beauty of the state, Layman said.

Harry Steele started U.S. Electric Motors, one of the earlier manufacturers of motors for refrigerators and other appliances. The company later merged to Emerson Electric Co., which is today a Fortune 500 company.

The foundation was started with a single gift of U.S. Electric Motor Stock in 1953, then valued at $35,000. In 1962, when the company merged, the foundation’s stock converted to $1.5 million.

Over the years, the foundation made repeated gifts to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian; gave $15 million to purchase the Dana Point headlands and keep it free of development; and donated money for the Harry and Grace Steele Children’s Center at Orange Coast College, to name a few of the recipients.

The 30-year-old Environmental Nature Center is a cause close to family members’ hearts. The center, a 3.5-acre nature preserve containing native plant communities ranging from desert to fresh water marsh to redwood forest, serves as a classroom for the community.

“More and more children are being kept away from anything natural,” said Burnand, the last surviving child of Harry and Grace Steele, referring the center’s cause. “It’s important for children to learn what nature does.”

About 16,000 students attend programs at the nature center each year.

About the foundation coming to a close, Burnand added: “It’s been a joy -- I hate to see the foundation come to an end. It’s been a real thrill.”

Explaining the foundation’s closing, Layman said the trustees are in their later years.

“The family believes their work is done,” he said.

Nature-center officials plan to spend the gift on building an educational facility.

“We want to make it the premier institution of natural science in the county,” said former City Councilwoman Jean Watt, fund development committee chairman of the nature center.

“We are overwhelmed and honored,” said Bob Kelly, the center’s executive director.