Monday, June 16, 2025
From sitting in the back of the class to becoming a successful businessman, author and professor, Steven Darter, a native of Woodmere, shares his story of tribulations and triumphs through books and presentations.
Darter, 75, who now lives in New Jersey, is retired from People Management, a consulting company he founded that helps organizations by focusing on the people in them and what they do best. He is also a former professor at the Barney School of Business at the University of Hartford and Saint Joseph College.
Darter wrote the books “Inside My Mind: Thought-Provoking Poems about Love, Life, People, Aging, Moving On and God”; “Lessons from Life: Four Keys to Living with Meaning, Purpose, and Success at Any Age”; and “Managing Yourself and Managing Others: Learn How to Improve Effectiveness, Productivity, and Work Satisfaction.”
But to say that Darter has traveled a long road to intellectual enlightenment is a world-class understatement.
From an early age, he knew that he wasn’t interested in school, and spent most of his youth playing poker and basketball with friends.
“I failed everything in my first year of high school, went to summer school, failed again, summer school again, and it was very difficult for me to stay awake in class,” Darter recalled.
He would come to Lawrence High School, put his head on his desk and fall asleep. This was his routine in every class. As a sophomore, he made it his mission to stay awake.
“I used to play a mental game with myself, where I would pick a number, and in my mind I would count and try and get the ringing of the bell to coincide with me reaching that number,” Darter recounted.
Then, he started to be a jokester in class. For example, he said, “We started reading ‘Huckleberry Finn’ in class, and I took my shoes and socks off and asked for a hall pass.”
He never took biology, chemistry or physics, and no math beyond algebra. “Back then they had Regents classes and ‘school’ classes,” Darter said. “I started in Regents and ended up in ‘school’ classes. It had an effect on the way I look at myself academically.”
He had trouble staying focused, and today he believes he had a learning disability. He never did homework or read the assigned material. Yet somehow he managed to graduate with his senior class, in 1967.
“Pace is very important to me — I like pace and intensity, and I think school became too passive for me,” Darter said. “Growing up in the Five Towns, I assumed I was going to college, because almost everybody back them in the Five Towns went to college.”
With the help of his sister, Joan, he registered at Mohawk Valley Community College, in upstate Utica. There his life took a turn, thanks to English professor Steve Mocko.
“I show up in this Tuesday English class and there’s the professor, Steve Mocko, and he gives people something to read,” Darter said, “and he’s pacing back and forth, asking people what the story meant, and he was accepting everything that people were saying.”
“There I was in the back, and I said the most stupid, asinine thing I could think of,” Darter recalled, “and he said, ‘That’s possible. Why do you think so?’ and I didn’t have an answer.”
But there was something about Mocko, and the way he taught, that moved Darter.
Mocko, who is now 86, retired from teaching 23 years ago, but he has maintained a relationship with Darter all these years. His daughter, Kristin Dobrinski spoke on his behalf.
“It was my dad’s first or second year teaching, where he had this experience with Steve Darter,” she said.
According to Dobrinski, Mocko is the most non-judgmental person ever, and he raised his children, too, to be accepting. “He really enjoyed teaching, and affecting people, and helping make a difference, consciously and non-consciously,” she said.
Darter sent Mocko manuscripts of his books before they went to print, to get his feedback.
“I love that Steve made this connection because for me, as an adult child, to read this amazing thing that my dad did is surreal,” Dobrinski said. “My dad sees Steve as an extension of him, giving me guidance as a father would, but from his expertise.”
Mocko and Darter have stayed in touch for over 40 years, and their relationship is still going strong.
“My dad feels a huge level of gratitude to Steve for telling this story, and a level of pride, although he is humble, for Steve and his accomplishments,” Dobrinski said.
She said that her father considers his experience with Darter one of his fondest memories.
“Steve probes deep into understanding what makes us more complete as people,” Frank Pacholec, V.P. of strategy and corporate development for the Stepan Company, in New Jersey, said of Darter. “Using himself as a real-life example, through marvelous storytelling, he effectively summarizes and develops four key aspects that have led him to be more in alignment with his life’s purpose and to experience joyful, positive emotions along the way.”
