Michael Stevens Left Lasting Community Legacies in Milwaukee

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Photo courtesy Michael Stevens family

Michael Stevens

Michael Stevens

Despite living in Milwaukee for just 13 years, Michael Stevens left significant legacies here, including what became two stalwarts of Greater Milwaukee’s food system. He founded Beans & Barley on the East Side and co-founded Outpost Natural Foods Co-op, now serving thousands of customers/owners in four locations. Stevens, 76, died on Nov. 15 in Alameda, California.

Stevens was born in Miami, Florida, on July 10, 1947, to Bernard Stevens and Sureeva Felt Stevens, civic leaders in the Jewish community. His childhood included the role of the eldest of a tight-knit group of siblings and cousins. While studying archeology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he met Debbie Brown in a class on Arctic anthropology. They both were involved in “countercultural” activities and values in Madison, before moving to Milwaukee in mid-1969 to advance progressive causes and ventures here.

Co-founder of Outpost Co-op

“In early1970, Michael helped organize the first meeting of what soon became the East Kane Street Co-op in 1970. After some stumbles, it evolved to become the Outpost Natural Foods Co-op a year later,” said Pat Small. 

Stevens and Ann Henderson, another recent Madison transplant, had suggested to local “Yippies” (Youth International Party members) Pat Small and Jim Albers the idea of organizing a food co-op akin to Madison’s Mifflin Street Community Co-op. “Michael organically shepherded Outpost in those early days, benefitting everyone with his generational knowledge of the food business,” said Small.  The Yippies enthusiastically endorsed the co-op and, along with Stevens, were among Outpost’s early volunteers. 

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Photo courtesy Michael Stevens family

Michael Stevens

Michael Stevens

“If something good was to be organized, and needed to be seen to completion, you wanted Michael Stevens in the room, in the mix, planning and doing whatever was required. Michael’s droll wit always kept the objective in perspective,” Small said.

Stevens also signed the lease for The Fertile Dirt, a cooperative vegetarian restaurant that operated from 1971 till circa 1973 in the legendary, now-defunct Sydney Hih Building on Juneau Avenue at Third Street. Stevens served as the baker and one of the funky eatery’s “experimental” cooks. Some people recall Stevens as a stabilizing anchor of what was an admittedly edgy enterprise. The restaurant was reorganized and renamed Fertile Earth before it ultimately shuttered.

Stevens and Brown married in 1972 and became parents of daughter Amanda in 1973 and son Corey in 1976. Debbie Brown co-founded the Children’s Co-op, an early Milwaukee daycare, “with friends who embraced the 1970s’ ethos of raising children communally,” according to his obituary. Members of the tight-knit community formed ties that have lasted for more than five decades. 

The Genesis of Beans & Barley

In August 1973, Stevens founded Beans & Barley as a small neighborhood “health food” grocery at 2410 N. Murray on Milwaukee’s East Side. Darlene “Lolly” Rzezotarski recalls its early days: “Michael and Debbie were our shop neighbors. My husband George and I had the Dancing Bear Antiquarian Bookshop at 2406 N. Murray, right next door to Beans & Barley. Mike always greeted folks with a big smile and walked with a bounce in his step, filled with optimism and the belief that we could make the world a better place with healthy food and good books. When I needed a break, I’d skip next door for a cup of the free anise tea that awaited patrons—along with a bit of conversation with Mike.”

Lynn Sbonik began working at Beans & Barley in 1975. She proposed becoming business partners several years later. “Michael agreed to that, in part, because it allowed him to buy out Stone Ground Bakery, also on Murray Street, where he had worked for years as a part-time baker. He knew that this arrangement would let him continue sustaining their family while diversifying in business,” said Sbonik. Renamed “Mike’s Bakery,” it continued supplying Beans & Barley and about 30 other outlets with a range of mostly whole grain baked goods, said Bill Embly, the first baker Stevens hired. 

In 1979, Beans & Barley moved to 1901 E North Ave., next door to 1812 Overture Records in the former Frenchy's restaurant building. Stevens launched the café aspect of the business. Shirley Bankier, a friend from the Children’s Co-op, worked with Michael to test recipes for a menu that offered “tasty, healthy food at affordable prices.” Early items included stir fries, burritos, vegetarian chili, hot and cold sandwiches, and smoothies, which all remain staples on Beans & Barley’s now-broader café and takeout menu. Sbonik said it began as a vegetarian café and expanded to include dishes with fish and fowl, to have wide appeal. 

Sbonik recalls Stevens as “an easy-going businessman who was also financially astute. Michael had learned about business from his father, a mainstream capitalist, who owned a local chain of grocery stores in Miami. He had started out bagging groceries. However, Michael was also interested in promoting community and inclusiveness through the business and was good at attracting like-minded patrons. He was generous, even-tempered and always a concerned listener,” said Sbonik. She has remained close to the Brown-Stevens family to this day, “because we were always friends, not just business partners.” 

Martha Spencer, another Children’s Co-op colleague, also knew Stevens and Brown in other contexts. “They became a team by putting their values first in all things. They mostly lived for the benefit of the community. Michael was a quiet but extraordinary influencer and guide in situations. Sometimes his presence was so subtle that you did not even notice what he was contributing. He was always having too good a time to take himself too seriously,” said Spencer, now executive director of the Milwaukee Environmental Consortium. 

Leaving Milwaukee for New Chapters

In 1982 Stevens sold his share of Beans & Barley, and the family moved to Atlanta, where Michael joined his father and brother in more food ventures. By 1996, the family sold those successful businesses, and Stevens embarked on another phase of his life. He briefly returned to Madison to finish his bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin, having dropped out in his senior year. 

He then went on to Georgia State University, where he earned a master's degree in art history and a PhD in history. His research focused on author Washington Irving’s time in Spain in the 1820s and an Anglophone perspective of the history of Spain and the Moors—topics far afield of Stevens’ productive years in the American South and Midwest.

In 2007, Stevens and Brown moved to Alameda, where he became an adjunct professor at Sonoma State, California College of the Arts (CCA), and Las Positas College, teaching world and art history. Near the end of this third career, he developed CCA’s curriculum on Chinese art and history. Family members said, “He was beloved by his students, whom he inspired with his infectious curiosity about the ways art and history shape our world and lives.”

Other pursuits included being a professional baseball scorer, avid golfer and fisherman, opera singer, and master birder.

Incidentally, with his Yippie friends, in 1971 Stevens also co-founded Milwaukee’s “Un-American Softball League” (with community-based co-ed teams and no umpires), which continued playing on weekends in Riverside Park and Kern Park until about 2011. Beans & Barley also fielded a team for a while, starting in 1974.  

His obituary (legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/michael-stevens-obituary?id=53602733) states: “Michael centered his life around his family and community. He was content at the center of large and small gatherings of his and Debbie's extensive family, naturally playing the caretaker role. He was loved for his personal generosity and sense of service both to his family and to the many people whom Michael had a knack for finding at the exact moment they most needed his kind words, a meal, advice, financial support, a friend, a mentor, a surrogate father, someone to sing with, or a room in his and Debbie's home.”

Michael is survived by Debbie Brown, his wife of 51 years; daughter Amanda Brown-Stevens (Adam Van de Water) of Oakland; Corey Stevens (Tatiana) of Sarasota, Florida; five grandchildren, siblings and many other family members and friends. 

Donations in Stevens’ memory may be made to the Golden Gate Bird Alliance (goldengateaudubon.org) or to any local opera, arts, or theater organization; or to have trees planted.