Beau Is Not Afraid

Stevie VanBronkhorst, 38, had been writing Stranger valentines to her husband, Beau Morton, 49, for 12 years. This year was no different. “Beau is not afraid,” she wrote, an homage to the 2023 Ari Aster horror film they’d recently watched together.

They watched a lot of movies together. And, it had Beau’s name in it, so it was fitting. “Honey, I love you! You are an excellent husband, father, and partner in this terrifying shit show America. I am the luckiest bastard alive!” the Valentine read. It was the first big, featured Valentine under the section’s header which read: “Love Is Alive.”

But then Beau died less than a week before we published our February issue. He never read it. But anybody who talks with Stevie would know how loved he was.

“He hated being the center of attention,” she says in a phone call a month after her husband’s death. “An article about him would drive him crazy.” But she missed him so much she wanted to talk about him. Everyone missed him. His friends, his parents, his sister, his niece and nephew. And his kids, four-year-old Brooks and eight-month-old Tilly.

“Sorry, Beau, you’re also gonna get a funeral,” she says.

Beau touched a lot of people in this world, and especially in this city. He was a founding member of the Transit Riders Union alongside now Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson. He served on the Pedestrian Advisory Board and the Feet First Policy Committee where he advocated for 2015’s Move Seattle Levy. He loved cities and Seattle in-particular. A cyclist, he hated cars, though he ended up with one. An avid reader, Beau consumed everything from The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey to titles like Open Veins of Latin America, Evicted, or Lies Across America. “He just always wanted to understand something completely,” Stevie says. Recently, he was trying to understand the collapse of complex societies. “That’s not a downer, honey,” she jokes.

Beau was also a cook. He loved whipping up intricate, international dishes as much as he loved sports. He’d combine the two. During the Seahawks season, he would plan “Food and Football” for the games. He’d whip up a dish specific to the team the Hawks were playing—cioppino for the San Francisco 49ers, French Dip for the Los Angeles Rams, and “We always make Denver omelets every three years,” Stevie says.

For just a hint of umami, he bought a whole jar of marmite to put a teaspoon into his chili he prepared for the Seahawks NFC Championship game. He only used it that one time. Beau died before the Super Bowl. None of their friends could watch. It was too sad. “And now I have a whole jar of Marmite,” Stevie says.

Stevie and Beau met in 2012. Stevie, a graphic designer and cartoonist, had moved to the University District from Burien. She’d been homeschooled and graduated high school early, so she attended college as a teen. She felt she’d missed the typical experience, and looked for it at Cafe Racer in the UDistrict where all the cartoonists hung out. There, she found a flier for a room in the Monarch Apartments, a former frat house on Greek Row moved over to Brooklyn Avenue NE. “It was part halfway house, part bohemian commune, part dorm,” she says.

One night, Beau showed up for a group movie night with The Killers in hand. He had nice legs, she thought, and he was funny. They became friends, attending the same parties on Halloween and a New Years party where a mutual friend mansplained how to play the harmonica to Mayor Wilson (she already knew how to play). Later, Wilson and Beau asked Stevie to design the Transit Riders Union newsletter. Beau brought frittata. Afterward, she asked Katie for his number under the pretense of thanking him for the treat.

“He said, ‘How’d you get this number?’ I said, ‘Never mind.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s fun. Let’s go out. How about Friday?’”

But, she didn’t have to wait long. Beau called her that night—he was in the neighborhood. Would she want to hang out now? Stevie, who’d just been in the bath, said yes. She dried her hair and met him at the now-defunct District Lounge in the now-defunct Hotel Deca. They decamped to A Pizza Mart, but it was too crowded so they opted for the pizza across the street—the also-gone-now Pizza Regazzi. They ate pizza on the stoop and talked all night. He started stashing his bike at her apartment, buying groceries and sleeping on her couch before they’d held hands.

“After about a day, I’m like, ‘Okay, but what are we doing here? What is happening?’ And he looks completely shocked and says, ‘I don’t want to move too fast,’” she says.

Soon after, Beau came home with “full-blown norovirus.” He thought he’d had bad coffee at the AM/PM.

“I’m pouring Gatorade down him as fast as I can, and it’s coming right back out,” Stevie says.

She’s not sure if this was when he told her about his congenital disorder, but in hindsight, she wonders if she had had to give him his pills during this illness.

Beau had congenital adrenal hyperplasia. It filled his adrenal glands with little cysts that messed with their ability to produce hormones such as cortisol, which regulates blood sugar and blood pressure, and aldosterone, which manages sodium and potassium levels in the blood. It can create intense dehydration through salt-wasting. He took pills every day to regulate it. It made him shorter than average, strong, and, as Stevie describes, “very chill and even keeled.” That “balanced my ADD anxiety out very well.” It is what ended up killing him, Stevie says.

A week after his norovirus, they started dating.

“Can we hold hands?” she asked. “Yeah,” he said. “Can we kiss?” she asked. “Sure.” Two months later, out of the blue, he said, “I should probably marry you.” They got secretly engaged in 2014 and married in 2017.

“I never thought I would get married,” she says. “He’s a strange person, and he trusted me and let me into his inner life… our weird qualities complemented each other, I suppose. I was just really, really lucky to find somebody who accepted me and the way I was.”

In January, right after the Seahawks won the NFC Championship game but before the Super Bowl, one of Beau’s and Stevie’s kids got sick. They both caught the bug, too. Beau hadn’t been taking his pills.

“The last thing I said to him was, ‘Get up and take your pills.’”

He got up. Stevie doesn’t know whether he was going to his pills or to the emergency shot they had stashed in one of the bookcases. Beau’s lack of anxiety meant he never showed Stevie how to use the just-in-case emergency shot.

“The gravity of that is going to weigh on me for a long time,” she says.

Beau did not make it to the pills or to the shot.

“Our family lost a father and a provider and a partner,” Stevie says. “I lost a special movie buddy, and the person I want to hang out with the most. He was so beautiful and handsome and I miss him so much.”

Beau showed his love for her and their family every day, she says. He was constant and dedicated. She returned his love with special projects.

“He loved nutcrackers,” she says. When she went to his apartment for the first time, she saw a closet stuffed with 20 nutcrackers. “What is that?” Stevie asked. “Those are mine,” Beau said. “They protect me.”

For their first Christmas, Stevie bought a nutcracker on clearance. She sawed the legs in half to make them short. She buffed out the face and repainted it. She painted a little Seahawks logo on the hat. And she tacked on a little piece of wood that she painted to look like his top 10 favorite books. He thought that was very loving.

She also showed that love through The Stranger’s valentine’s. Here are some of the other Valentine’s she wrote him over the years:

2015: STEVIE LOVES BEAU  Even if moving to AK is the dumbest thing I’ll ever do, marrying you will be the smartest! Keep up with the long con & I’ll always say I like you o.k.

2016: “BEAU-YEAH”   Beau’s still my Beau and I’m definitely going to marry the shit out of that guy. Thanks for waiting for me! YOU’RE THE BEST!

2017: BEAU <3 <3 <3     It’s been 4 years and you’re still about my size and 100% my style.

Can’t wait to actually get around to marrying you this summer. Love, Stev

2025:  I HAVE A SECRET…It’s BONES! I love you, Beau, you’re the best dad and husband in the world. And you’re handsome.

Beau’s memorial will be held at 3/22 at 2 pm at the Center for Urban Horticulture, a day before what would have been his 50th birthday. You can RSVP here.

[Eds Note: This story has been updated with the correct movie Beau brought and to reflect that Mayor Katie Wilson already knew how to play the harmonica and a friend at the party was mansplaining it to her, not teaching her.]