Steven E Burke

Steven E. Burke, treasurer and chief financial officer of The Grable Foundation, was found dead Tuesday in a Downtown Pittsburgh alleyway beside a public parking garage. Steven Burke worked in sales for H.K. Porter Company, Allegheny Ludlum and Dietrich Industries in Chicago before moving back to Pittsburgh at age 37 to help his family run The Grable Foundation. His family founded the Rubbermaid consumer products company. Steven Burke, a graduate of Shady Side Academy and University of Virginia, loved to ski, golf and travel — he visited five continents and biked across New Zealand with his son, Pete. Family members emphasized how much Burke loved his two sons, Chip and Peter, and his wife of 27 years, Gail. He joined family members — including his brother, Chip Burke, and mother, Patsy Grable Burke — on the seven-member, unpaid board overseeing The Grable Foundation , a Downtown-based grant-making organization focused on helping youths become successful, independent and compassionate members of society. The foundation had $282 million in net assets in 2014, IRS records show. Minnie K. Grable, widow to Rubbermaid Inc. founder and lifetime director Errett M. Grable, established the foundation in 1976 with help from the late Charles Burke Sr., who was her son-in-law and Steven Burke's father. Burke Sr. — who died in February 2010 at age 87 — succeeded Errett Grable on the board of Rubbermaid Corp. Minnie Grable died in 1990, and the foundation's first professional staff was hired in 1991.