For the St. Louis American
“There is a power far above what you can think, dream or pray,” David L. Steward said this year at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center at UM-St. Louis in a program titled An Evening with David Steward, sponsored by Multi-cultural Relations at the university, headed by Gwen Deloach-Packnet, and attended by about 150 people.
Steward, author of Doing Business by the Good Book and chairman/CEO of World Wide Technology, said he is no different from anyone else. “You put your pants on one leg at a time, like I do,” he said. Yet, he comes across as extraordinary – a walking, talking exemplar.
First, perhaps, it’s his small-town upbringing in Clinton, Missouri, one of eight children, which helps explain his deep and abiding respect for family cohesion, the work ethic and spirituality. He is unpretentious, which is quite refreshing from the head of the largest African-American firm in the country, according to Black Enterprise magazine and the St. Louis Business Journal. He is the first African American to be a member of Civic Progress and general campaign chairman of the United Way.
Steward has been married for 28 years to the smart and attractive Thelma Steward, a registered nurse by training, who accompanied him to the UMSL event. Prior to World Wide Technology, he suffered several failed ventures. Some doubted his ability to succeed. Some women said to his wife: “Girl, you can do bad by yourself.” But this did not deter them, as they are a couple with each other’s back.
Steward teaches Sunday school at Salem United Methodist Church. Though he has a maddening travel schedule, domestic and abroad, he honors his commitment.
His parents, married 54 years, told him he could be anything he wanted. His father, who was not high school-educated, was a master mechanic and bartender, hauled trash and held several other jobs. He was “the Jamaican from Clinton,” Steward said, stoking the humor of the audience familiar with a Jamaican character who held an absurd number of jobs on the TV comedy series, In Living Color.
After the Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. the Board of Education, Clinton quickly moved to integrate its schools. Guess who was the first crossover student? It was 10-year-old David Steward. But the Ku Klux Klan decided this was not going to happen. Steward’s father and other men pulled all-night vigils to make sure everything went OK, and it did.
Steward said when he went into business solely to make money, nothing went right. When he focused on service, he started to become financially successful. “I learned growing up to put people first,” he said. “Reaping and sowing is service.”
With only four employees in 1990, World Wide Technology now has 26 locations across the country. Recent gross revenues are over a billion dollars.
Said Steward: “There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.”
Malaika Horne, Ph.D. is director of the Executive Leadership Institute in the College of Business Administration at UM-St. Louis.