Honoring the Life of Steven Havill
Steven F. Havill
June 22, 1945 – August 27, 2026
Steven F. Havill, beloved husband, brother, uncle, friend and celebrated author of more than thirty novels, passed away on August 27, 2026 in Los Lunas, New Mexico, at the age of 81.
Steve was born on June 22, 1945, in Penn Yan, New York, the son of the late Edward and Margaret (Nassett) Havill and grew up on the west branch of idyllic Keuka Lake.
Steve was, at his core, a storyteller, a builder of connections. He worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for the local Chronicle Express, where he captured the stories and characters that filled his life in the Finger Lakes.
On a family trip that took the Havills through North Dakota, Minnesota, and down through Colorado, Albuquerque, and back to NY, the seeds were planted for Steve’s love of the Southwest. Years later, he returned to pursue a Bachelor’s in Education from University of New Mexico. While taking a horseback riding class his sophomore year, he was drawn to his future wife Kathleen since they were the only two in the class who had ever been on a horse before.
In 1969, he graduated and the two married. They returned to upstate NY for a few years where Steve taught at DeSalles high school in Geneva, NY before the lure of New Mexico pulled him back to pursue a Masters in Education from UNM.
During his two and a half decades as a teacher, hundreds of students learned through the stories he spun around the curriculum. Mr. Havill was passionate about teaching and developed creative ways to encourage students’ ability to think creatively. In Grants, New Mexico he brought Biology 2 and Literature to life for high schoolers for 13 years. When the administrative climate in Grants drove Steve to start a new chapter, the couple sold their small private airplane for enough money to live on for a semester while they figured out their next chapter.
In response to the struggles he had seen with high schoolers, Mr. Havill was eager to teach younger students in an effort to guide their development of problem solving and organizational skills. He hoped that by prioritizing the development of these core abilities in middle school, students would leave his class more ready for success in high school. His first assignment in Ruidoso Municipal School District was a sixth grade class, which he enjoyed very much. When former colleagues from Grants followed him to Ruidoso, Mr Havill saw an opportunity to build on his relationships and team teach. In his class, middle schoolers experienced staged crime scenes and archeologic dig sites designed by Mr. Havill and his team. Through immersive project-based, exploratory learning, his students help write the stories to explain the details he guided them to uncover, while weaving in science, social studies, math and a sense of community. This innovative approach prepared his students to be thoughtful, independent communicators and learners when they started their high school careers.
For the first 9 years of this chapter, Steve and Kathleen’s story was set in an old farmhouse they fixed up in a valley in Lincoln, NM. Their lives were full of music, Scrabble tournaments and exceptional food with friends at Chango’s. After Steve retired in 2000, they moved to a bright house with a big yard, room for his grand piano and space to add a fireplace in Raton, NM.
An avid gun collector and firearms aficionado, Steve acquired an Associate of Applied Science in gunsmithing from Trinidad State Junior College in Colorado around age 60. This pursuit enhanced the realism of weapon-related details in his writing. The degree also connected to his hobbies, allowing him to restore antique guns as a personal avocation during and after his years of teaching.
All the while, the writing career he had begun in 1981 with his debut western novel, The Killer, grew into a body of work spanning more than thirty books. His Bill Gastner Mystery series was set in the fictional Posadas County, New Mexico, and features aging, insomniac Bill Gastner as Undersheriff as he was promoted to Sheriff. The characters and community Steve created with Sheriff Gastner grew into the Posadas County Mystery series which focuses on the blossoming career of dedicated Undersheriff Estella Reyes-Guzman’s after Gastner’s retirement.
Steve also wrote the Dr. Thomas Parks historical mystery series, set in the 1890s Pacific Northwest, along with several standalone westerns. Steve’s storytelling had brought the characters and landscape to life. His novels earned a devoted readership from people around the world who came to feel they knew the people and places of Posadas County as well as their own hometowns.
At a book signing, he was invited to visit the small Baldwin Cabin Public Library for a reading. After that appearance the librarian asked Steve, “Well, what do we owe you for coming all the way to Catron County, New Mexico?” Without a moment’s thought he responded “Chocolate chip cookies.”
Those cookies cast a spell and Steve and Kathleen fell in love with the beautiful skies, piñons, juniper, ponderosa pine and granite hills of Cibola Forest. After the reading, Steve said, “You know, we really love this country. We could live here.” Weird luck allowed the librarian to hear this and turn the page for their next chapter when she said, “Well, that gentleman right over there with a white hair? He's a real estate agent. Go ask him.”
So they did. He responded with, “Well, I'm brand new to real estate, but I just signed on a really nice place out in the forest.”
Steve and Kathleen spent that night camping in their SUV in the yard of what would become the setting for the rest of their lives. They woke to this quiet landscape, visited by deer, elk and birds and were mesmerized. Once they got in to admire the house, they found that all the parts of their life fit perfectly with space seemingly custom-made for the grand piano surrounded by windows. In 2002 they moved from Raton to Datil and built a community around them. Steve put his woodworking skills to use and replaced the floors of the old library, used his backhoe to help maintain the water system for their Homestead community and purchased a road grader to help with road maintenance.
Despite the undeniable success as an educator, craftsman, author and community leader, Steve remained disarmingly honest about his own shortcomings. He identified a lack of self-discipline as the trait he most deplored in himself, admitting he loved playing both piano and flute but couldn’t push himself to really excel at them. What he regularly pushed himself to do was explore ways to get the highest Scrabble score possible from the tiles he drew. He read voraciously, and loved supporting other writers to hone their craft through classes and connections. He enjoyed the daily problems that needed solving. His happiest professional moment wasn't a big public milestone — it was the day an editor at Doubleday wrote to him by mail in 1981 offering a contract for his first novel, and, in interviews, he noted that even after 31 books, nothing has quite matched that first time.
And each of those books was dedicated to the love of his life, his wife of 57 years, Kathleen [Murphey] Havill with whom he shared untold simple joys watching the birds at the feeder, tending to their property and co-creating their story. He is also survived by brother, Eric (Barbara) Havill of Branchport, NY; nephews, Justin (Pamela) Havill, Joshua (Ami Wolfe) Havill, and Aaron Havill; niece Laura (Curtis Myers) Havill, who will all dearly miss his dry humor, unquestioning love, appreciation of the next project and frequent communications. We know, as Steve once said, that he is “already elsewhere in the universe, doing other things.” He was preceded in death by his brother Mark Havill.
