[The following bio is written by Deborah Dietrich, third & final wife of 15 years to Stephen from 10/4/2003 on, in residence together from 8/1999 to 11/2018. It is written from my perspective and with the awareness that 50 years of life preceded my entrance, so I sincerely hope those of you finding this who knew Stephen between 1945 and 1995 will post stories below. Please consider the fact that our 14-year-old daughter will be reading them. ~DD]

Stephen Fletcher Markle was born on Wednesday, September 26, 1945, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to parents Helen Blanche Willis and William Fletcher Markle and died from complications due to Parkinson’s Disease on Tuesday, November 6, 2018, at home in North Hollywood, California, held by wife Deborah Dietrich and witnessed by daughter Alexandra (Melody) Markle.

As a child, Stephen lived with his mother and grandmother in Toronto until his mother's sudden passing in 1958, after which he moved to Bel Aire, California to live with his father, a director and producer (radio with Orson Welles & Marlene Dietrich, Jigsaw, The Incredible Journey) who had remarried actress Mercedes McCambridge. Stephen loved his high school years at Verde Valley School, a boarding school near Sedona, AZ, where he wrote for the school paper, including poetry that got him noticed at Stanford University. Stephen decided, instead, to follow his father “home” to Canada, where he attended the National Theatre School of Canada and began a life-long career in acting.

Stephen never gave up his passion for writing, however, and was always working on something -- long-form poetry, screenplays, songs, books, plays (sometimes all in one, like the colossal piece he was working on the last five years of his life) -- and always reading a couple of books at a time (“The Odyssey,” The Bible, everything by Alice Munro, everything by James Salter, Rumi, Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”).

Stephen was a gifted Shakespearean actor and teacher, and even after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in the spring of 2005, he mounted the titular role of King Lear at Baltimore Rep in celebration of his 60th birthday and dedicated his performance to his “one and only daughter, Alexandra Josephine Dietrich Markle, who will be 14 months on opening night.” (Alexandra, who re-named herself Melody last year, is now 14 years old and has inherited Stephen’s gift of writing, imagination, poetry, art, vocabulary, stage presence, and love of animals & nature, as well as her mother’s grammatical preferences, musical talent, and psychological adeptness, among other unique attributes.)

Stephen met the mother of said one and only daughter, Deborah Dietrich, in San Francisco in 1995 while both were performing in Olympia Dukakis’s debut at ACT, “Hecuba,” where Stephen played Polymestor and Deborah sang with Eastern European Vocal Ensemble KITKA as the Greek Chorus (“the best part of the play,” according to Stephen). Ironically, he and then-partner Leslie Monthan were married during rehearsals for “Hecuba” and moved to New York in 1997 when Stephen was cast as Dorian Lord’s love interest, reporter Mel Hayes, on “One Life to Live.” Stephen was nominated as favorite new character by the Daytime Emmy Awards, and he and Leslie enjoyed country life in their upstate farmhouse until producers and writers changed on the show and Mel Hayes “died” in a plane crash in 1999. Stephen returned to L.A. to meet with agents and coincided with Deborah while she was in SoCal to meet biological siblings for the first time. The dovetail of life choices came to a head in May, and the unbelievably gracious and Universe-faithful Leslie ultimately maintained friendships with both ex-husband and me, the third wife, in addition to spending time with our daughter during her early childhood. (I look forward to reconnecting with Leslie in June and re-introducing her to Melody now. I truly feel blessed by the model of her openness to the way decisions beyond our control shape our lives in a myriad of ways.)

I believe it is a testament to Something Greater that Stephen’s first meeting with my mother (and father, but she was the one asking the questions) after his choice to move with me to L.A. could have been as uncomfortable as it was but her reaction to his death be just as impassioned. Stephen became a Dietrich with his first round of Pictionary at the my brother’s house, where we participated in annual Easter egg hunts even before we had a child and shared many meals around their welcoming family table, and with the even-bigger Christmas gathering at the Irvine brother’s house where we were clearly an unusual trio -- artists all three -- but Stephen loved to tell Hollywood stories to this non-actor audience and recite poetry or Shakespeare when encouraged.

My parents, though only ten years older than Stephen, took him on as a son and provided invaluable support during what was an extremely challenging journey. To be diagnosed with Parkinson’s only nine months after your first child is born is a game-changer, though for several years progression was very slow, and Stephen parented with more energy than I have ever had, frequently seen at the park pushing Alex on the swings or flying kites or pretending to be dragons. We were parenting partners for a long time, and Stephen was able to act and write, travel to see his dear friend Stanley in Austin and travel to London with his dear friend and writing partner Saul… but Parkinson’s is a disease triggered by stress, so when Stephen’s agent embezzled from him during a successful voiceover campaign for UBS, the stress, rage, and humiliation of that unsolvable event compounded with disease progression exacerbated normal memorization pressure during on-camera work into an unconquerable obstacle. One of Stephen’s last co-starring episodes was as a heart surgeon in “Human Error” on House. I knew what had gone on behind the scenes and that’s sort of what I remembered, but I recently re-watched the episode, and you would never know, hearing that quintessential Markle voice, that anything was wrong; his performance is recorded in history as the result of his work, not the struggle within.

Likewise, as I have pondered the man I married and cared for, it’s been baffling to focus on a single version of this person whose life took on a tragic path at the same time as it blossomed into a gift previously not only unimagined but flat-out denied. The joy of fatherhood overshadowed by an incurable, progressive disease: caught in the crosshairs of Fate. Of course, anyone knowing Stephen early on knows how extremist he could be, so progressive meant instant in his mind, and the depression that accompanies most cases of Parkinson’s did not miss our house. It’s probably the one aspect that was so pervasive it was hidden amidst life with a child in L.A. yet also the one thing I think we could have addressed if we’d had medical professionals actually helping us as a family and asking the right questions, not just throwing pill after pill at him.

But my point is that--if I do my job right and hopefully even if I don’t--history will ultimately remember Stephen Fletcher Markle not for the struggles within his life but for the beautiful work he produced: nearly unlistable theatrical performances, poetry so brilliant and so stunning I fell in love with him, a masterpiece of a play that I promised on his dying day that I would finish (my mother says deathbed promises don’t count, but I never make a promise or give a compliment I don’t mean), and finally a truly unique and gifted child who will carry his spark into a better future. I love you, Stephen. Thank you for teaching me how to make an orchid bloom.

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