Recovery community recalls gentle giant
By TIM CHRISTIE
The Register-Guard
Steve Overton spent his younger days doing
drugs, running with outlaw bikers and raising
enough hell to twice get locked up in prison.
Overton got sober on Christmas Day 1989, when
he was 34, and never looked back. He immersed himself in the
12-step recovery movement, earned a college degree and
became a drug and alcohol counselor.
Last week, this bear of a man was killed in a
head-on crash near Creswell. The driver of a
pickup truck swerved off a country road, veered
back over the centerline and smashed into
Overton's minivan, according to the Lane County
sheriff's office.
Sheriff's officials are investigating whether the
pickup driver had been drinking, Lt. Kevin
Woodworth said. No charges have been filed.
It's a cruel ending to the story of a man who
transformed himself from an illiterate meth cook to a respected,
well-known counselor who dedicated his life to helping others
get clean and sober, his family and friends say.
"Personally, I think it's one of the biggest tragedies there is,"
said his older brother, Tom Overton, as he worked on a 1958
Harley-Davidson panhead in the garage of his Bethel area home.
"It took a lot for him to stay clean and sober," he said. "For him
to die this way is just wrong."
Overton's death at age 47 has
left a gaping hole in the recovery
community in Eugene and
Springfield. About 200 to 300
people showed up for his
visitation Sunday at a Eugene
funeral home. His funeral Friday
also is expected to draw a large
crowd, with members of the
Clean and Sober Motorcycle Club
leading a procession of
motorcycles to Lane Memorial
Gardens.
Sheriff's investigators are
awaiting blood-alcohol lab results
for the driver of the pickup truck,
Antonia Marie Mattingly, a
30-year-old Blue River woman.
She was critically injured in the
accident.
Overton grew up in Eugene, the son of a millwright, and was
sniffing glue before he was in his teens, his brother said. He
soon took up other drugs, including alcohol, with gusto.
"He was wild and crazy for years," Tom Overton said.
Riding with the Free Souls Motorcycle Club, his outlaw ways
earned him a well-deserved reputation for trouble and landed
him in prison on drug possession and delivery charges on two
occasions in the 1980s.
It was while he was in prison the second time that Overton
began to turn his life around, said his best friend, David
Sacrison, who co-founded the Clean and Sober Motorcycle Club
with Overton.
He taught himself to read in prison. As he listened to other
inmates talking big about the criminal schemes they would
hatch when they got out, he determined to find another path,
Sacrison said.
"He knew he was not going to go back," Sacrison said. "It was
nowhere. It was a loop. It was stupidity."
After his release in 1989, Overton decided to get sober, but it
took one last bender on Christmas Eve for him to hit bottom. He
woke up Christmas Day determined to quit.
He went into treatment, embracing the 12-step movement and
earning his General Educational Development diploma along the
way. He got an associate degree in Lane Community College's
chemical dependency program and counseled inmates at the
Lane County Jail.
He worked for ACES, an addiction counseling program, and most
recently worked as a case manager for Sponsors Inc. in
Eugene, which helps people who have just gotten out of prison
find housing, jobs and a way to live clean, law-abiding lives.
"He had a dignity and a way of presenting himself and his
experiences that had a powerful effect on people," said Ron
Chase, executive director of Sponsors. In dealing with ex-cons,
"His experience gave him instant credibility. He had been where
they were and turned his life into a success that was
recognized throughout the recovery community."
Overton's ex-wife, Alisa Reese, said ex-cons trying to get sober
would spend time with him and think the same thing: "If Steve
Overton can do it, by God I can do it."
Overton was "just an inspiring man," said Robyn McGregor, a
drug and alcohol counselor at Serenity Lane, a private
treatment center in Eugene.
"He believed totally and completely in recovery," she said. "He
wanted it for everyone who would listen. He lived his life trying
to give that to other people."
Overton cut an imposing figure. His 6-foot-9 frame was topped
by coarse black hair pulled into a long pony tail. He had devilish
eyebrows and a bushy beard going gray, and he liked to wear
his leather vest with the Clean and Sober colors on the back.
"I always likened him to Rasputin," Sacrison said.
But the tough exterior belied a gentler side. He liked to garden
at his home on Seavey Loop Road, cook and bake bread, and he
would spin CDs at the numerous dances he helped run for
Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous.
"He looked like a big, badass biker, but he wasn't," McGregor
said.
"He was a huge person, but he was the gentle giant type. He
was just a very sweet guy."
Tom Overton organized a motorcycle procession for his
brother, Steve, who was killed in an auto accident. Steve
Overton gave up drugs and became a counselor.
Photo by Thomas Boyd of The Register Guard
Copyright © 2002 The Register-Guard