Free Press honors Steve Molk with a Free Press Founder Award

Stephen Molk grew up in a “liberal” family who supported Democrats and marched for civil rights. He supported Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and McGovern in 1972. He learned protest songs, attended the Unitarian Church, and was a member of Liberal Religious Youth. At Oberlin College, Steve majored in chemistry and music working on the college newspaper as copy editor and writer.

In Columbus after college, he joined the statewide group Ohioans for Utility Reform. His comrades included some of the Free Press founders – Steve and Sandy Sterrett, Libby Gregory, John Quigley, Roseanne Friedlander, Paul Volker, and Bill Finzel.

Steve began writing features for the Free Press in the 1970s including coverage of Seabrook demos, the Piketon, Ohio atomic workers strike, and a discussion of district voting for Columbus City Council (yes, they were trying to reform Council way back then!).

His Free Press column “Bangs and Whimpers” compiled news articles about the anti-nuclear and safe energy communities. The title is from a TS Eliot poem, “The Hollow Men,” which reads: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper,” and the column heading read: “With nuclear power and weapons, the world could go either way before its time.” 

Steve became very active in anti-nuclear/safe energy campaigns and helped set up the Central Ohio Safe Energy Committee in 1977-78. He attended several demos including Seabrook in 1978, the Zimmer nuclear plant in 1978 where he got arrested, and a Columbus rally marking the 1-year anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident.

At a New York City nuclear power and weapons protest in 1982 that drew more than a million people, he was arrested twice: once at the Soviet mission to UN, and then with his friend Mike Gruber at the US mission to the UN. Steve then went to a Pentagon protest in DC and handcuffed himself with others to the grate on the driveway forcing the polite officers to get bolt cutters to remove them.

In December 1982, Steve and Mike went to the Rhodes statue dedication at the Ohio Statehouse. In an unplanned outburst, right after Rhodes began speaking, he shouted “Remember Kent State!” An officer warned him not to do it again, But after the officer left, he shouted it again, was immediately dragged away and taken to the police station. Mike bailed him out. Steve subsequently sued the City for a First Amendment right violation, later settling for $600.

From the 1990s through the mid-aughts, Steve continued his involvement with the Free Press delivering the newspapers throughout the city as a “paper boy” along with Bill Buckel.

More recently, he volunteered for the Mid-Ohio Workers’ Association, mostly helping organize food distribution. He retired in 2020, and now spends a lot of time making music, including participating in several choirs and an orchestra playing French horn.