Stephen F. Botsford

A Funeral Service for Stephen F. Botsford, 75, of North Barrington, will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 18, 2026, at the St. Viator High School Chapel, 1213 E. Oakton Street, Arlington Heights. Family and friends are invited to a reception following the service.

Stephen Forrest Botsford passed away on January 11, 2026. He was born on March 18, 1950, in Des Moines, Iowa, to Ed and Neva Botsford, and grew up in Plymouth, Indiana.

Steve’s childhood was marked by curiosity, mischief, and an unshakable belief that he would one day be successful. Alongside his best friend and older brother, Mike, he found creative ways to get into trouble, from throwing bottles at passing freight trains to once locking a milkman in a walk-in refrigerator. Even then, Steve was steel-eyed and focused on his future.

His high school grades did not reflect his ambitions. He liked to joke that he was once kicked out of every class in a single day. Undeterred by teachers’ opinions, he enrolled at Indiana State University determined to use it as a stepping stone. That determination paid off when he transferred to the University of Notre Dame at the start of his junior year.

In a way only possible for Steve, his college job at a South Bend gas station serendipitously led to a Notre Dame Law School interview, setting the stage for the career he envisioned. After graduation, he joined a large accounting firm’s law department but quickly realized corporate life was not for him. At just 26, he quit and became his own boss.

What followed was an unrepeatable entrepreneurial journey. Steve owned a printing company, a jewelry business, a high-end furniture restoration shop, and a pizza restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along the way, he presented the 1983 World Series Trophy to the City of Baltimore and closed the largest deal of his career by famously telling a key decision-maker that he was “a terrible manager.”

Steve met his wife, Kathleen, after his closest non-related friend, David, set them up on a blind date she believed was a business meeting. After their first meeting, Steve told his father he had met the woman he would marry. They wed in 1985 and welcomed three children: Alexandra in 1987, Stephen Jr. in 1989, and Victoria in 1993.

Above all else, Steve loved being a father. Whether holding his children as infants, roughhousing with them as toddlers, or watching them grow into adulthood, fatherhood was his greatest joy. He delighted in bringing them along on work trips and once explained his philosophy to a colleague who asked what he did when clients did not want children in meetings. Steve quickly replied, “screw them, they need me more than I need them.”

Beyond business and family, Steve was a committed philanthropist. He supported Notre Dame through law school scholarships and a special fund for spectacular leaders named the Hesburgh Scholars. He also gave back generously to the Los Angeles community where his business was based, donating over half a million dollars to provide college scholarships for first-generation students from the San Fernando Valley.

Steve will be remembered for treating everyone he met like an old friend. He turned chance airplane conversations into lifelong relationships and welcomed his children’s friends as extended family. His family’s lasting image of him is with a cigar in one hand and a pint of Guinness in the other, telling one of his legendary stories, perhaps his favorite about faking an injury so Michael Jordan would pinch-run for him in a game of slow-pitch softball.

Steve is survived by his beloved wife, Kathleen; his children, Alexandra (Jeffrey McVay), Stephen Jr., and Victoria; and his sister, Cathy Garrett. Steve also leaves behind many in-laws, nieces, nephews and cousins who meant a great deal to him.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Ed and Neva Botsford, his brother Michael, his sister Teri Verduyn, and his cousin Curt.