Stephen Saltonstall

Stephen Lee Saltonstall grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in U.S. History & Literature. His honors thesis was on Robert Gould Shaw, who led the first Black regiment in the Civil War, the Massachusetts 54th. After college, Steve worked in low-paying jobs, including as as a gas station attendant and operating room orderly, before getting a law degree at Northeastern University. He was a trial lawyer for 40 years in Massachusetts and Vermont, concentrating his practice in the fields of criminal defense, freedom of speech, child abuse and neglect, and preservation of critical black bear and neotropical songbird habitat. In retirement, Steve works as a volunteer for Humane Borders, a Tucson, Arizona-based organization whose mission is to save the lives of undocumented migrants making the perilous trek across the Sonora Desert by maintaining more than 50 water stations along the way. Steve and his wife Ellen, a retired public school teacher, live on the far east side of Tucson with their Labrador Retriever, Gregory.