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T
welve years ago, Steve Tate became
“The Mayor.” This month he’ll
relinquish his seat on Morgan
Hill’s City Council to his successor, Rich
Constantine. After being elected six times
to serve as mayor, he’s leaving big shoes
to fill and is ready to start a new chapter
in life.
Steve is a rarity in modern politics: his
legacy as a city and community leader is
built on respect and responsibility.
Some folks will always think of him as
Mayor Tate, others will be angling to get
him on their boards. His family is hoping
for a little more face time. Friends are
wondering what he’ll do with his new-
found free time.
According to Jennifer Tate, Steve’s wife
of fifty-two years and a community leader
in her own right, “I’ve learned over the
years that just when I think I have him all
figured out, he does the unexpected.”
Early Days
Steve was born in 1944 in Berkeley,
California. His father was a Naval Ar-
chitect who designed ships for Mattson.
Work kept his father on the road a lot, so
much of the parenting of Steve and his
older brother Robert fell to his mother.
Despite his impressive history of
leadership, Steve candidly admits his life
didn’t start out that way. “I was about as
far from being a leader as anyone could
be during high school,” Steve said. “I’d
skip class to play pool at the bowling
alley. I started my junior year with a
D-plus average. Thankfully I had
teachers who believed in me and
turned me around during those
last two years. One teacher went to
UC Berkeley to argue my case and
I got in.”
Steve’s father passed away during
his sophomore year of college. “He
didn’t have a penny of savings, so I
worked my way through school, at
the bowling alley, doing computer
programming jobs, and hashing
at a sorority.”
Steve Meets Jennifer
The Tates met at UC Berkeley, but
neither of them remembers exactly
where or when. “Jennifer’s brother
and I had started playing bridge in
the same group,” Steve said. “One day
she joined us, and we hit it off, then
started dating.”
“When people ask, we like to joke
that we’ve just always known each
other,” Jennifer said.
Armed with a BS degree in
Mathematics, Steve began looking for
a job. Jennifer’s father worked at IBM
and suggested that Steve apply there.
He was hired and offered a choice
of jobs and locations, including a
position in Alaska.
“When I told Jennifer about the
possibility of working in Alaska, she
said, ‘Sure, go ahead Steve, but I’m
staying here!’ So I wisely took a sales
engineer position in Sacramento, and
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
december 2018-january 2019
that worked out very well.”
The Tates were married in 1966 at
St. Mary’s Church in Los Gatos— a
tribute to family tradition. “We were
married by the same priest who married
my parents and who baptized my sister,
my brother and me,” Jennifer said.
38 Years at Big Blue
Looking back on his IBM career,
Steve said, “It was like a big family.
IBM worked to keep employees and
promote them. Today, people have to
change companies to get ahead in t
heir careers.”
“I liked working as an SE, a sales
engineer. Customers called the SE’s
because they knew we kept the sales
reps honest.” Steve worked in IBM’s
fast-growing storage division covering
the entire northwestern U.S. By that
time, he and Jennifer had two children
and were living in Walnut Creek.
After three years of heavy travel,
Steve wanted a break. He became a
product planner in IBM’s San Jose
plant, was eventually promoted into
department management, and then
spent a year on assignment to Rolm
in Santa Clara before returning to
San Jose to devote the rest of his “Big
Blue” career to software planning.
He and Jennifer moved to Morgan
Hill in 1977, and while they loved the
area, it was the City’s struggles with the
impacts of growth that sparked Steve’s
interest in the public sector.
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