Stephen (Steve) Harold Klein

Stephen (Steve) Harold Klein passed away unexpectedly on Sunday, February 15, 2026, in Louisburg, Kansas at the age of 55. Born January 18, 1971, in Wichita, Kansas, he lived a life shaped by service, curiosity, and a genuine reverence for both people and animals.

Steve spent decades in service to the mission and animals of the Cedar Cove Feline Conservation and Education Center in Louisburg, Kansas, where he advanced from volunteer to executive director, board president, and resident curator. He was the quiet force behind its daily survival—feeding, cleaning, repairing, building, educating, and advocating. He believed that ethical conservation lived in education, dignity, and stewardship, and he shaped Cedar Cove accordingly as a place of reverence, not spectacle.

His life outside the sanctuary was just as full. He played basketball at Ames High School in Ames, Iowa, and rowed for both Wichita State University and his alma mater, the University of Kansas. He was also a certified scuba diver, an ordained minister, and a man who moved comfortably between disciplines—graphic design, advertising, hydroponic gardening, modeling and photography, beekeeping, welding, engineering, building, and inventing—all out of a genuine delight in understanding how things work and how they could work better.

He adventured with the same spirit while carefully tending to his relationships across borders and decades. As a young man, he and a friend made their way to Australia and stayed as long as the money held out, sustained by humor and an easy openness to whatever came next. He also traveled to visit lifelong friends, and stayed close to local friends with weekly poker and pool games. His commitment to conservation carried him to India, where he worked alongside fellow conservationists protecting endangered wildlife, both learning and teaching.

He stayed close to family and friends in simple ways as well: a well-timed text, a perfectly landed pun, a shared meme that let you know he was thinking of you. He had a particular fondness for his nieces and nephews, and influenced them with a saying he came back to often: “It’s good to want things—but it’s better to want things for others.” His home reflected the same interior life—filled with family photos, drawings, handwritten notes, and ideas scrawled on mirrors and whiteboards, the ongoing work of a man always dreaming, creating, and documenting.

He is survived by his mother, Marlis Broadhead (Glenn); father, Richard Stephen Klein (Marjorie), sisters Linda Klein, Nancy Culp (Ryan), and Emily Kuhlman, nieces and nephews Alec Unruh (Evan), Kolton Shindelar (Brooke), Riley Ware (Brylie), Kallin Shindelar, Sam Culp, Cory Stephen Culp, Avery Kuhlman, and Savannah Kuhlman, and great-nieces Marlee Ware and Blair Shindelar.

His legacy lives on in the big cat sanctuary he helped preserve and grow--the animals who found safety and a forever home under his care and the dedicated volunteers and park visitors whose understanding of how to respect and nurture the world was quietly nurtured simply by knowing him.

A celebration of Steve’s life will be held at a later date at Cedar Cove. In his honor, donations may be made to the Cedar Cove Feline Conservation and Education Center.