COLUMBUS — Mike DeWine still talks about Leonard Steele some 50 years after his death, a man 20 years his senior who spent 18 years in a Kentucky prison after he’d “cut a guy who died.”
The small, wiry “Shorty” later found himself toiling alongside an impressionable kid and future governor of the state of Ohio, working at his family’s seed business.
Shorty became a friend for the young DeWine and later his wife, Fran.
“At that time in my life, growing up and working at DeWine Seeds out in the mills, I was working with guys out there,” he told The Blade. “Some were from Kentucky. Some were local. Some African-American. Some white. I learned a lot about work.”
“Shorty was somebody who’s been gone for probably 50 years, but he and some other guys had a profound impact on my life, just getting to know them as we loaded trucks for nine hours a day, day after day,” the governor said.
The subject of Leonard “Shorty” Steele briefly came up last week in Mr. DeWine’s State of the State address before a joint session of state representatives and senators. He used his second-to-the-last update on the health of Ohio to urge businesses to hire former inmates like his old friend who’ve paid their debts to society and are now looking for the “dignity, purpose, and hope that comes with a job.”
From the age of 12 until he graduated from law school, the future U.S. senator and state attorney general had worked at DeWine Seeds, the family’s southwest Ohio wholesale seeds company, after school and during summers. He and Steele mowed grass, painted fences, and loaded trucks.
“He was a guy who was a really hard worker,” Mr. DeWine said. “When he and I were out working just the two of us, we had a lot of time to talk. I asked him, ‘I heard you’d been in prison.’ He said, ‘Yep. I was — down in Kentucky.’”
Later after Mr. DeWine and the future first lady of Ohio were married, Steele and his wife urged them to stop by for whatever was growing in his garden at the time.
“He was really strong, doing physical labor his whole life,” Mr. DeWine said. “He remained a friend. The last time I saw him was when I visited him in the hospital shortly before he died.”
During his speech, Mr. DeWine recognized Brandon Chrostowski, founder of the Cleveland nonprofit EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute that provides hands-on work experience in the culinary and hospitality fields to former inmates.
“I have seen businesses around the state make a point of hiring people who come out of prison,” Mr. DeWine said. “By and large it’s worked for businesses, certainly worked for the person coming out. Every single year 18,000 people are turned loose from the state prison system and go out into society.”
“We want them to be successful,” he said. “It’s in our interest for them to be successful. If they get a job and hold a job, odds are good that they’re not going back in. It’s a win-win.”
This is a percentage of the under-employed in Ohio who don’t get the same kind of attention as other groups.
“The numbers are not known, but the true measure [of success] is to increase the number of jobs they are able to hold on to,” he said. “We do measure recidivism. Our Ohio numbers are pretty decent. We do know that one of the keys to that is a job, being able to make it and not go back and commit another crime.”
The governor’s comment during his speech was a request, seeking what his family’s business had done decades ago.
“I say to the employers in Ohio: Give them a chance,” he said.
The governor said he would not rule out potentially offering incentives along with that request to employ former inmates.
First Published March 19, 2025, 11:30 a.m.
